


Bitter Boy

by octaviamatilda



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Blood Kink, Blood and Injury, Body Hair Kink, Brutality, Coercion, Complex relationships, Deception, Disability, Dub-Con Knife Play, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fighting Kink, Forced Alcohol Consumption, Frottage, Guilt, Hair-pulling, Heavy Angst, Humiliation, Interrogation, Introspection, Love/Hate, M/M, Major Character Death (NOT ANY OF THE RAGNARSSONS), Manipulation, Misperception, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Touching, Oral Sex, Rape, Religion and Faith, Sexual Assault, Sibling Incest, Slavery, Slow Burn, Strong Language, Torture, Trauma, Voyeurism, submissive undertones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:52:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 33,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octaviamatilda/pseuds/octaviamatilda
Summary: During the raid on York, the Ragnarssons find something entirely unexpected. Ivar will endeavour to keep it for himself.





	1. En

**Author's Note:**

> As you may notice from the tags, some distinctly non-canon events have a shaping force here. Plotwise, the brothers do not part ways on an argument and when they do return from York it will be together, if not precisely united. Of course, there will still be…disagreement. 
> 
> Also, it's there in the tags, but to reiterate, the major character death is NOT any of our boys. I don't want to do any spoiling, but nor do I wish to mislead any potential readers, and I know some dislike reading those sorts of fics. Which is cool; whatever floats your longboat. The Ragnarssons ARE going make it through this, just so you know. Not necessarily in once piece, however.
> 
> I suppose one might think of this as something like magic realism, though it doesn't seem to me to be terribly out of keeping with the hints of the magical and supernatural in the show. I have tried (successfully, one hopes) to keep the boys largely in character. I have also resisted romanticising Ivar in particular, as tempting as it is. He's a gift. Hvitserk is an unexpected challenge. And Ubbe is Ubbe.
> 
> Tags will be updated as we go along. The first chapter contains nothing especially violent or explicit, but things WILL take a darker/bloodier turn as things progress. I mean, this is Vikings.

‘Ivar! Ivar!’ 

He ignores Hvitserk’s excited cries to begin with. The church is full of wailing and crashing: above the sound of his brother attempting to gain his attention, Ivar soaks in the sounds and the smells of their accomplishment. His accomplishment. The wet thud of bodies and the sticky bite of blades through flesh surrounds him. Death is so full of life in this way, and Ivar thrills with the hum of power in his blood and his bones. He drags himself along the cold stone floor, slithering through the muck and gore. He’s pleased to feel the grit under his fingers after the crutches and the chariot. The trembling priest they have pinned to the flagstones is pissing himself with fear and begging for his life. Ivar can’t draw his eyes away. The way the pathetic thing shakes, and pleads…it is so compelling, Ivar is almost sick with the fascination in his gut.

‘Ivar! Brother. Look.’

He is ready with a rebuke but the heavy silence that follows Hvitserk’s voice makes him look up from his entertainment with curiosity. The church is still and quiet but for the groans of the dying. Every warrior has stopped.

When he brings her forward, Ivar is empty mouthed with shock. They all are.

Hvitserk has her lightly by the arm, though he looks like he would rather not be touching her at all. She goes without protest and falls to her knees before Ivar when he beckons absently with his hand. In every way but one she is ordinary; a young woman, Saxon by her clothes, though she has not said a word. Terrified, swaying slightly and pale as a winding sheet. And folded on her back, wings. The colour of a soft white kid, and as grey as a wolf pelt at the outermost feathers. They brush the filthy floor. She does not meet his gaze, her head down and eyes fixed on his legs.

Ivar looks to Hvitserk. His voice is quiet. ‘Where did you find her?’

‘In the room to the side, with some of their holy women. She was trying to protect the older ones.’ Hvitserk looks astonished and uncomfortable, and for once Ivar does not laugh.

Ubbe pushes his way to them, his sword hanging loosely in his hand. 

‘What is she?’ Ubbe stretches out his hand. The brothers watch, rapt, as he runs his dirty fingers through the short, fluffy feathers that cap the folded joint of the right wing, just behind her head. He drags his fingertips gently down to her back, then pokes through the laced openings in her tunic where her wings protrude. He moves closer to her, his lips parting slightly when he feels the feathers and the flexible bones give way to warm skin.

She visibly twitches, and breathes a shaky stream of air through her nose. Ivar’s eyes snap to her lowered face. His hands remain in his lap.

Ubbe draws back sharply. ‘What should we do with her?’ The whole church waits for his answer.

Ivar cuts his eyes to Ubbe, saying nothing with words. _We?_

‘There is enough to be done here, gathering the loot and slaves and tending to the wounded. You and Hvitserk will choose what you please. And see to the food supply. The Saxon bread is much nicer than ours. Softer.’ 

Ivar suddenly shifts forward and reaches out to the young woman. He wishes to see her face but she topples backwards in fear. Before her backside hits the ground, Hvitserk springs forward, attempting to right her with a knee in her back and she lurches into Ivar’s lap.

His legs have been quietly paining him since they arrived in England and he hisses angrily when her weight abruptly lands on them. A sound of raw fear issues from her throat and Ivar’s gut twists with pleasure. She can’t help but try to grip his wasted shins with her hands; her wings unfold when her damp palms slip on his grimy legs.

Ivar’s irritation disappears like smoke in the wind. Ubbe and Hvitserk stumble back. She is magnificent.

Her wings expand, snapping and rustling as a sail billowing in a gust; in the dim light of the smoky church, they have a light like fresh snow and they reach several arms length either side of her. They flap once, huge and strong, as she scrambles, trying to get away from him. An audible murmur ripples through the assembled warriors.

The young woman is crouching, shaking before them; she has gained her feet but is too frightened to stand. Ubbe approaches her slowly and takes her under the arm, lifting her bodily until she is upright. Her wings slowly refold as she regains her balance and she meets his enquiring gaze. Her eyes are dark blue, and blank, like the cold ocean they had sailed over. 

‘Is she a Valkyrie?’ Hvitserk breaks the hush, stepping around in front of her. 

Ivar scoffs. ‘Of course not.’ He doesn’t sound like he believes himself. ‘She would not have been hiding in a Christian church with a group of old women if she had come to take us to Valhalla.’ He drags himself closer to her, peering up at her face from the ground. ‘Besides, look at her. How she shakes, and is scared of us.’

The three Ragnarssons are arrayed in front of her. She only looks at Ubbe.

Ivar snaps at her, using the Saxon that Ragnar had taught him. ‘Look at me!’

She jolts violently but looks down at him. 

‘What is your name?’ Ivar grins as he does when he’s about to do something unpleasant.

‘Ardith.’


	2. To

Sister Agnes’ frail body is curled on the floor where it had fallen. Her life blood is madder-red on the front of her white habit and black where it has poured from her onto the stone.

Ardith cannot comprehend the cruelty of these men. To slaughter a church full of people, who can make no defence and have nothing -- nothing with which to bargain but the last breath they spend in pleading. Nothing that these Northmen wanted but that breath besides. What pleasure they felt from the sound of it she could not imagine.

After the dark haired cripple had had her name, he had seemed satisfied for the time being. He only showed his teeth, then had spoken to the other young man who had found her and murdered Sister Agnes. She felt they must be brothers – there was a tight, soft familiarity to their speech with one another, though the physical resemblance wasn’t strong. Ardith went easily with his hand hard at her elbow, back through the small door through which he had burst with a wild smile. He was certain to place her against the far wall when he stepped away to bolt her in. The thought that he now might be cautious of her could have made her laugh. What did he think she could, or would do now? 

The sight of her sister’s body, small and bent like an animal gone to die, plugs her throat with grief. She is too shocked to cry. She feels and does not. When the young man leaves her without a word, she falls to her hands and knees. The other sisters are gone. Herded and killed, surely. And for Sister Agnes, there will be no time for a proper burial and no one to lay her in the ground with care. If the Northmen intend to stay, they cannot leave their victims as they are. Disease will come when the bodies begin to stink and lose their shape. Let it, she thinks. Let the pestilence take these men. 

They are not so foolish. The thought of these wolves throwing what remains of her people into piles to be burnt distresses her almost as much as the idea of their mutilated corpses left untended to rot. There is nothing to be done.

She shuffles forward on her knees, and feels hot liquid rise through her chest when she gently uncurls the old body before her. She manages not to vomit, rearranging Sister Agnes’ cold limbs and laying her out on her back as carefully as she can. The last hands to touch her should be gentle, she thinks. Let that be enough. May God see her suffering and welcome her.

The enormous red mouth that runs across the sister’s stomach squelches and gapes when Ardith shifts her body. She crawls away as quickly as she is able and vomits loudly, wretching for several long moments until her stomach is empty. Collecting herself, she pillows the old head with the straw she gathers in a wide scoop from the floor and sets the small crucifix straight on her thin chest. 

Ardith does not know the correct prayer for these rites. Father Alwin lies dead in the nave. He would know the Latin but his tongue has been stopped and his soul waits unreverenced too. Silently, in her head and in her heart, she whispers a prayer for her sisters, her people, and for Agnes. 

The sun has long since gone down on the day when the door reopens and the fair brother reappears. Ardith has been sitting on the freezing stone floor for hours, with the cold seeping into her bones and fresh ghosts for company. She has taken no food and no water and is too hungry and sick in heart to do more than look up at him wearily. 

She understands she must rise, and understands better still that they have only spared her because they believe she is special. Ardith struggles to her feet. The young man does not look as though he wishes to help her, and so he does not. He gazes steadily at her as gets up; she ruffles her wings to resettle them. 

His eyes flicker across her face, and then catch on the movement of the feathers at her back. Ardith watches him watch her. Now, they will want to know.


	3. Tre

She is led directly across the nave to the small chapter house. The Northmen are resting now, or murmuring quietly around low smoky fires and cleaning weapons. They are scattered in groups down the length of the building. They look tired, and only a few take note of her as she passes silently. They stare and say nothing.

The chapter house is warmed by smouldering braziers and lit by clumps of fine white candles that have been stolen from the altar. Ardith is still juddering with the cold. She keeps her eyes fixed on the wall ahead, blinking when the door slams at her rear.

She is not accustomed to being stared at – she does not recall the sisters ever treating her any differently than the other novices, though she was not one of them and knew well enough why she spent her life in seclusion. They had given her privacy and kindness, given her her life.

The dark-haired cripple speaks first, unable or unwilling to repress the play of emotions over his dirty face. He is amused, fascinated.

‘Ardith.’ He grits out her name slowly, relishing it. ‘I am Ivar the Boneless, son of Ragnar Lothbrok. Leader of this great army.’

His language is stilted and his accent almost malforms the words. She is meant to be impressed, she supposes, but the names mean nothing to her. The others do not respond to him; they do not understand, she thinks.

‘Are you Saxon?’

She finds her voice, though it croaks from hours of silence and the scrape of bile in her throat. 

‘Yes.’

The two at either side sit up straighter, no longer pretending to show blank disinterest. Ivar inclines his head. He looks like a carrion crow.

‘You were born here? In this kingdom?’

‘That is what I was told by the sisters, yes.’

Ivar pauses, is about to speak again when the eldest at his right elbow interrupts. Ardith does not know his rough words, but comprehends the sense well enough. He wants to know what she is saying. She watches Ivar’s nostrils flare, and begins to feel – in her breath and in the beat of her heart – the sheer unpredictability of this young man. His composure is either impeccable, or as fragile as a spider’s web. 

‘I have been rude.’ His smile is rigid and so insincere she thinks he must not be able to help it. ‘These are my brothers, Ubbe,’ he gestures to his right, ‘and Hvitserk.’ He turns to his slim, scowling brother. ‘Your favourite, yes?’ 

Ardith says nothing. Anything is a mistake, for she briefly searches Hvitserk’s face without intent and Ivar barks a horrible laugh when his brother casts his anger at the floor and refuses to meet her eyes. Hvitserk sensed the insult, even if he lacked Ivar’s skill with language. They disagree often, she is certain.

Ivar rattles something out in his own language and Ubbe nods gently; his head is tipped to his younger brother but his eyes are fixed on her.

‘And so, you are Saxon. And have lived with these holy women since you were a child?’ Ivar continues.

Ardith cannot smother the fear in her stomach but she is desperate to move closer to the brazier. She is worried she may collapse if she cannot bring some heat to her chilled limbs. Ivar reads her stillness so clearly she might as well have asked aloud. 

‘That’s it’, he waves her forward, ‘you can come closer.’

She moves one unsteady step towards the glowing embers and helplessly extends her hands to the comfort of the heat. She has taken, and now has to give. That is how these Northmen understand the world. Let her be sure of that, if nothing else.

‘The nuns.’ She provides Ivar with the new word. He will never forget it, she knows. ‘I do not know how old I was when I was given to their care. I only remember them. I have never known my parents.’ 

Ivar looks expectant. What else can she say? Her life has been peaceful, silent – until now. She opens her mouth to speak, but he cuts her off. 

‘Well, are you going to show us? My brothers and I, we are curious.’ 

Ardith is frantic to comply. ‘Show you?’ 

He looks at her as if he cannot believe her stupidity, and his heavy brows wrinkle in confusion.

‘Yes.’ He speaks slowly, as though to an idiot child. ‘We want to see you fly.’

‘I— ’, she begins.

Ubbe leans forward in his chair, and says something to Ivar. He slaps his older brother on the shoulder and grins back at her. 

‘My clever brother is right, Ardith. Perhaps there is not enough room in here for that?’

She can think of nothing to tell them but the truth. Entertaining is what she must be to them, and valuable. She will not survive otherwise. But there is no best answer to give – they will throw her from the tower for the sake of it. 

‘I cannot fly. The sisters never allowed me to.’ Ivar blinks at her and the words keep spilling. ‘I do not know if I can. I have never tried.’


	4. Fire

Ivar cannot stop laughing. He feels his brothers’ confusion, but they know not to ask until he calms down. He claps his hands, and another wave of laughter rolls over him as he watches her try to swallow her growing fear. His cheeks ache when he stops, and he rubs his fingers along his jaw.

‘What is it, Ivar? Why won’t she do it?’ Hvitserk does not conceal his eagerness. He refills a cup of wine and hands it to him. 

Ivar takes a deep swig; it’s good, strong and sweet. ‘She cannot fly.’ He turns to Ubbe, then Hvitserk, for the pleasure of gathering their expressions. ‘She has never been allowed, and has never tried.’ Ivar grinds the heel of his hand on his cramped thigh. ‘Can you believe it? She has wings – great white wings like the owls in the mountains above Kattegat, and she might fly anywhere. From one end of Midgard to the other. To the gods, even. And she has never even used them. Sits here like a chicken in a coop.’

Ubbe stretches across him for the jug on the table. ‘Well, Ivar, if you wish to profit from her, she will need to be tended to.’ His older brother is not smiling. ‘Look at her, she can barely stand.’

Ivar considers Ardith, and sees the fight happening inside her. She is frozen in confusion at his mirth but so desperate with fatigue that she is struggling not to collapse to the floor. It is beautiful to watch. He shoves Hvitserk with his elbow, and catches the look that he casts to Ubbe. ‘Go and help her then. She must sit and eat with us.’

Ivar notes Hvitserk’s hesitation and smirks. 

‘She is just a slave. She should not eat with us. I’ll take her back to her room.’ 

‘Just a slave, Hvitserk? Do your eyes not work? You will fetch more bread and meat, and another cup for Ardith.’ 

His brother visibly swallows down whatever he was about to say and stomps towards the door. As he draws level with the stupid bitch, Ivar lets out two echoing barks like a dog. He could almost howl with glee when Hvitserk whips his head round and his hand comes to rest on the pommel of his dagger. Ubbe shoots to his feet at Ivar’s side – Ivar senses the subtle shake of Ubbe’s head and the fire that banks down in Hvitserk’s eyes tells him clearly enough what love lies there. 

Hvitserk turns to leave and meets Ardith’s gaze for a long moment; in the shadow at the edge of the room, the thoughts on his sharp face are not readable. Instead, Ivar sticks his tongue out and pants loudly, pushing the sound from his lungs with as much yearning force as he can. Ivar feels the hankering fire in Hvitserk’s belly even from a distance -- sees the slobbering hunger in the set of his tense shoulders. Like a fucking hound whose balls need cutting. He knows Ubbe sees it too.

Hvitserk shoves his way past her and is gone.


	5. Tidligere

Hvitserk puts his shoulder to the narrow door. It does not give on the first shove and he grins. A locked door means something of value, something worth hiding.

His heart is singing – louder, even, than the dreadful, wonderful din of screams that he had hacked his way through and for which he is still short-winded. He feels Odin close to him – knows that he is pleased with the blood spattered on his face and the tacky coating that runs from his elbow to the tip of his sword. Setting his weight against the door once more, he heaves himself harder to the wood. It bursts inward with a splintering crack. He whoops as he lunges in, and the smile dies on his face.

There is no gold or silver, nothing he can carry away or keep for himself. A group of old women cower in the corner, those funny Saxon creatures – Christians - that wear so much cloth from top to toe. Only their wrinkled, terrified faces are visible. Standing guard in front of them is a young woman, whose huge white wings fill the small room. For the space of a single breath, Hvitserk thinks this will be his last in Midgard. His blade scrapes the floor; he does not raise it.

The terror on her face is so definite, so true, he knows with his next movement that she has not come for him. He kicks the door closed behind him, then dives forward and grips her by the throat with his left hand: her neck is slender in his strong fingers and she makes a choked cry and beats her wings rapidly. The feathers brush his face and the sensation makes his lips part. There is no space for a tussle and nowhere for her to fly, but neither does he know what to do to subdue her without killing her. She continues to flap while his hand tightens on her; the air that gusts around the bare space stirs up the stink of blood and sweat and he smells himself, breathes in deeply. She kicks out at his shins but cannot make contact and he enjoys the panic on her face. With a roar, he summons his strength and lifts her to her toes before he slams her on her back on the floor.

At the moment of striking the stone she had folded her wings at her back and Hvitserk beams at his luck. If she had not, he’d have knocked the sense from her skull and she’d have been useless. He kneels over her, marvelling at what he has found. He keeps his hand at her neck and lays his forearm along her chest, bearing his weight down and admiring the way her wings creak and flex, protecting her like the long planks of a ship.

She is shaking and gasping and he relents to allow her her breath. He does not much care about the old women in the corner, though he casts a glance their way to make sure they have nothing with which to strike him from behind. Their hands cover their heads and they have not moved a hair’s breadth. He places his sword on the floor.

Hvitserk sits up and swings a leg over the woman, straddling her body. Her jaw is clamped shut and she stares at the ceiling. What does she think he will do to her? He licks his lips. She is not pretty like Margrethe, and certainly not beautiful like Lagertha. Her mouth has a nice shape though and her hair is reddish and ripples pleasingly. Between his legs, her hips feel healthy and round; he pushes his groin down into her and her eyes drop shut. 

She is wearing a long tunic like the Saxon men and loose breeches. He slowly undoes the belt at her waist, watching her face. She still does not look at him but her throat bobs when the buckle clinks against the floor as he discards it. He will not have long but he does not want to rush this; the anger in his gut stirs when he thinks of Ivar, and Ubbe. She is so extraordinary, there is no possibility of keeping her to himself. He rucks up her tunic and runs his fingers over the soft skin on her stomach. When the others see her, they will forget which warrior found her, who was responsible for capturing such a remarkable creature. Ivar will have her, and Ubbe will pretend it is the diplomatic thing to allow it. Hvitserk loves Ubbe, deeply and in a way he cannot explain, but Ubbe is frightened of Ivar. It should not be so. His older brother thinks he does not see it, but he does. He scrapes his filthy hand further up the pale body under him and tucks the tunic beneath her chin. Her breasts are small and her nipples pink like the revebjelle blooms in the fjords at home. Home. His prick is hard in his breeches and he can’t help the grunt when he grinds down again. Home. Margrethe and Ubbe, and their bed. And Ivar. He knows that Ubbe feels fear in his heart when he looks at Ivar and he understands; he feels it too.

He wants her to look at him. He roughly grips the hair at the back of her neck and leans over her face. 

‘Look at me.’ He speaks into her mouth. ‘Look at me.’ Her eyes are blue and there are wet trails tracking down her temples. She doesn’t understand the words, he is sure, but the sense of his demand seems to drip into her slowly. She meets his eyes, and arches up into him and Hvitserk is too surprised to react. Their lips are suddenly pressed hard together and there are cold fingers tugging on his braids, though he has not moved. Her chest heaves and the noise in her throat is so false, he disconnects and sits back quickly.

Her hips roll up against his prick and he is forced to shift his knees to keep his balance. She pushes her fingers under his belt, searching for his laces. He watches her breasts quivering; her eyes flick sharply to the women behind him and he has only the time of a heartbeat to prepare himself.

Lunging upwards, she unfurls her wings; her arms twine like serpents around his neck and blank whiteness wraps around them as she enfolds them both in the wide expanse of feathers. Hvitserk is in a blizzard, and can see nothing. She shouts something by his ear but it is in Saxon and not for him. Behind him he hears shuffling and crying and quick movement. He manages to rise to one knee in a fury, yanks the woman back with a handful of hair and swings his sword in an arc behind him as he clutches it up from the floor. There is a pitiful cry over his right shoulder and someone hits the stone with a smack. Screaming echoes in the room and Hvitserk viciously back-hands the bitch under him. She falls back with a gasp; it sounds good. He drops his sword and does it again. His skin is hot with anger and he punches her in the ribs. 

‘Did you think that would work?’ he is yelling at her, and cannot stop. ‘Did you truly think you could save them that way?’

She is wheezing and struggling under him, trying to take great rattling breaths but cannot seem to fill her lungs. When he stands up and steps away she immediately goes to her hands and knees. He spits on the floor, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. He watches her back arch and sink as she takes gulp after gulp into her body. Her wings beat, and beat, matching the pull of her gasping. Warm air gusts around him, breaking again and again on his face and hands and throat, like waves slapping the keel. He watches her. The urge to kick her shoots through him like an arrow but is gone as quickly. His prick is still hard. He knows he will have to give her to Ivar.


	6. Fem

Ubbe feels a relief like a sighting of land when Hvitserk returns, bearing more food and an extra jug of wine, and he appears far calmer than when Ivar had forced his retreat. His face is carefully blank – Ubbe thinks his younger brother has more quiet self-control than anyone could ever know. Restraint and duty had been bred into Ubbe, but not Hvitserk. After that, and the passionate love that Mother had poured into Ivar, Hvitserk had got what was left. And strange, reckless Sigurd. He had got even less. Still, if Hvitserk and himself could be plucked like the strings on Sigurd’s lyre, they would make the same sound, he is sure. 

Ubbe looks at Ivar’s curious, angry brow – he is studying Ardith like she might be Freya – and is glad that he has kept his tongue behind his teeth and not roused him to anything blacker.

Hvitserk thumps down the items on the table and sits heavily in his seat. Ardith flinches; Ubbe had pushed her down as gently as he dared into the chair next to his own while Hvitserk was absent. She perches as though she is sitting on the edge of an axe and the flickering light from the candles nearest to her show how she quivers. But for her flightless wings, Ubbe thinks, she looks ready to take off.

Now, he sees the bruises on her neck. Ivar has not been alone with her and so he thinks of Hvitserk’s hands, and Margrethe’s throat, and – 

Ivar leans forward, pours a cup of wine for her and begins to speak in Saxon. She does not look inclined to take it. Ubbe will have to ask for a translation; not because he needs one, but because Ivar must be allowed to think that he requires it. Later, when they are taking a piss, or breathing the fresh night air alone, Ubbe will tell Hvitserk and trust him to keep the secret. Before they lie down to sleep, he will make the terms of the exchange clearer: what did you do to Ardith? How did you do it? 

Ubbe will whisper – tell me, brother.

Ivar does not spare a look for himself or Hvitserk yet, only for the terrified creature in front of him. As he lives and breathes, Ubbe is too curious to feel sorrow in his heart for her. In the distance, he sees the day he will have to defend her from Ivar, but it is not now. 

‘You have lived in York all your life?’ Ivar speaks as softly as Ubbe has ever heard.

She nods, her lips dark with the drink. It has only been a mouthful but Ivar attentively fills her cup to the brim again. Ubbe knows what he is up to. When the red of the wine is in her cheeks and her limbs are loose, she will stop shaking and will talk and talk. No one needs to tell her what to do; she drinks and eats the meat and bread, slowly and steadily. When you know you are walking into a trap, you do so on soft feet, he supposes.

‘Why did the nuns keep you from flying? Did they tie you up?’

Ardith looks thrown by the question. ‘No, of course not.’ Her voice is smoother and louder now, just a little. ‘They would never have done such a thing. They cared for me. It wasn’t— ’. She takes a deep draught from her cup. Stupid, Ubbe thinks, but she is trying to find courage in the bottom of it and, gods, but they have all done that before now.

‘I chose not to leave them.’ She sounds close to tears. ‘They told me it would be safer if I did not try to fly, if I did not draw attention to myself in the world outside the walls. They were right. Where could I go and find the same kindness, the same safety, or people who would care about me and not treat me differently because of something that I cannot help?’ 

Ivar does not answer the question and when she cradles her forehead in her palm, looking weary and lost, Ubbe knows she is not expecting one. He takes the opportunity to ask Ivar to tell them both what she has said; he repeats it back, almost exactly, while he continues to stare at Ardith. Ubbe is not surprised that Ivar leaves out the very last part; if his little brother had been born with wings rather than useless legs, they would all still hate him. In the well of his mind, Ubbe imagines Ivar with black feathers on his back like a raven, and Mother binding them with leather straps to keep him on the ground.

‘You must still be thirsty. Drink, drink.’ Ivar passes another full cup to Ardith and now she has the courage to take it directly from his hand. She downs nearly all of it at once and Ivar is smiling with all his teeth. Hvitserk is watching her mouth, Ubbe notices. She shifts in her seat; his eyes are drawn to the flicking and resettling of her wings, and he wants to tell her that she can stretch out if she wishes, if it would make her more comfortable, but he keeps his silence. 

Ubbe has his own desire to see them; he feels the eagerness in Ivar and hopes that he will surrender his pretence. His little brother wants to go to her – like Hvitserk, like himself. He is certain that Ivar longs to touch her more than any of them but he is not wearing the metal bands on his legs; it would mean dragging himself along the floor to her sit at her feet. 

Ubbe feels such a stab of love in his heart for Ivar at that moment. For the first time in his life, Ivar is truly ashamed of his legs, and Ubbe is ashamed for him.

Ardith suddenly speaks up without prompting. ‘When I was a child, I cut them off.’ She smiles; it is small and full of rue but she looks up at them, at Ivar, and is smiling. The drink must be boiling in her blood to do such a foolish thing but Ivar’s plans always work. Always. ‘I stole away from the dormitory in the middle of the night and took some knives from the kitchens.’ 

Hvitserk does not know what she is saying but he is sitting forward now and gazing at her face; it is a good likeness of incomprehension and so Ubbe mirrors him, creasing his brow as if he is trying to understand her words. 

‘I did not want them. They made me different.’ She swallows, pushes her cup away. Ivar seems to be holding his breath. ‘When Sister Agnes found me, she told me there was so much blood they thought I must be dead.’ 

Ubbe clenches his jaw. Stop, you stupid girl, stop talking. 

‘I was in such a deep sleep they could not wake me. But my heart was still beating and my breath kept coming and so they did not know what to do with me.’ Her wings are flinching and fluttering, rustling in agitation. 

‘They healed so quickly. Before seven nights had passed, they had begun to grow back.’

Without warning, she unfolds and beats them hard and the brazier to her left crashes to the floor. Ubbe and Hvitserk leap up together and both of them lunge at her as she hurtles backwards over the chair behind her knees. She smacks against the stone before either of them can reach her and Ivar is laughing. 

‘Is she injured?’ Hvitserk sounds concerned. She looks unconscious and Ubbe feels at the back of her head. His fingers catch only in her hair and his hand comes away clean.

‘Just knocked out. And fuller than a wineskin. Her head will bang like a drum come morning but she’ll live. Come on, help me with her.’ 

Ivar calls out from behind them. ‘Don’t let her die in the night. I’m sure Hvitserk won’t mind watching her.’ 

They drag her silently through the church to the small room where she was found. Ubbe and Hvitserk have an arm each over their shoulders. Her wings drag on the ground.

‘Wait.’ Hvitserk hands her over to him fully, and takes a large cloak from the warrior snoring on the floor. When they lay her down in her cell, Ubbe bundles it under her head. In the low light, she looks small and fragile and her wings are dirty. He wonders if she ever cleans them like birds do.

‘Will you stay or shall I?’ Hvitserk’s voice is neutral.

She will not need a nursemaid, and they both know it. Ubbe can tell – can sense - simply but certainly, that Hvitserk wants him to refuse so that he can stay. So he can lie down in the dark and look at her. Touch her soft feathers and hold his want, his desire, his anger, in his hands, and keep it to himself for a little longer. Hvitserk might hurt her, he might not. 

Ubbe thinks of Margrethe. He turns to leave, and manages not to smile. ‘Sleep well, brother.’


	7. Seks

Ardith wakes alone – slowly, and with difficulty. The sickness in her stomach comes on her swiftly when she tries to rise and great lances of pain spill down the back of her neck. Beneath her head is a cloak she does not own; one of them had thought of her comfort, or her value, and placed it there. She knows it was not Ivar. 

Cold dawn light makes the damp walls of her cell look paler and she is certain she looks as wan as they; she must get up if she does not wish for clothes already dank with the night’s dew to bring a chill and then a fever. If she slipped into sickness the Northmen would not nurse her, though she cannot decide if they would leave her to sweat and shake until her heart gave in, or whether they’d be done with it and finish her off quickly. For a brief moment, she thinks – what would it matter? I would be gone out of this life and would be the source of no one’s profit, or amusement. Her thoughts turn suddenly to Sister Agnes; Ardith knows how she would admonish her for such a thought, and would expect more, and better, of her.

Abruptly, she sits up, gritting her teeth against the pain. Sister Agnes. Her body is no longer there; the dull brown patch on the flag stones is all that is left. In her heart, she hopes that kindness guided the hand that gave her a pillow for her head and kindness that saw Sister Agnes’ body taken away, but it is a futile hope and she does not even know why she lets the idea take hold. Perhaps, the eldest, Ubbe, would do such a thing. She remembers— no, she is not sure if it is a memory or something else, but she sees Ubbe and feels his hand on her shoulder. His grip is gentle and there is an absence of humour in his eyes. The laughing boy – his brother – is the sort to cut someone just to see them bleed but she hopes, dangerously, that Ubbe is not his brother in that.

Hvitserk. Agnes. The shame of her stupidity and her failure is certain – that memory holds no doubt. She as good as swung the sword with her own hand. Ardith presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and crumples in on herself, and the pain in her ribs calls to her. She deserves it. May it have been Hvitserk, she thinks, who hauled the old body from the floor, with that pleasure on his face as when he had tried to take her. She is weeping, desperately and loudly. Let it have been him -- and Ardith will know for as long as she lives that her Sister was dumped on a midden of shit or tossed on a pyre by that wolf and that it was her fault.

She begins to laugh; her tears have stopped and she doesn’t recognise the sound of her own voice. Wishing joy for him, so that her own pain will be greater, and harder to bear. What death, and confusion, these men bring. She is laughing and laughing, and does not know herself. She cannot see, or smell, or touch herself. They have shown her that, at least. She has never known herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lord, that was angsty. Sorry everyone.


	8. Syv

‘We have allowed ourselves to be distracted.’

Ivar slept badly and woke early. He had spent so much time rolling around in black English mud since they arrived that his legs, wet more often than they were dry, were now cramping and aching as they had not done since he was a child. And if Ivar is awake, clenching his fists against the pain, then his brothers will be too. 

‘I agree, Ivar.’ Ubbe tears at bread with his teeth. ‘We must decide what we are going to do next, rather than playing with slaves. The Saxons are weakened but it likely won’t be long before they muster forces and try to take this place back.’

‘Very perceptive, Ubbe. I am certain that is exactly what they will do. Which is why we will be leaving.’ 

Every time Ivar finds that he is the cause of that particular expression on Ubbe’s face, he enjoys it a little more. He thinks it could not possibly be more thrilling the next time, and he is always wrong.

‘Leave? Now? What was the sense in spilling all that blood if we are to lose what we have got as soon as it's gained?’

Ivar does not answer, smirking into his cup. ‘What about you Hvitserk? What do you think?’

Hvitserk looks to Ubbe. Whatever he is searching for, he does not find it. 

‘I—don’t understand. We have a foothold here now. Why would we give it up?’

‘Look at you two, thinking like farmers. Father would be proud.’ 

Hvitserk simply takes it, eyes on the floor. He always does, Ivar thinks. And if he rolls over for Ubbe, he will roll over for me.

Ubbe stares calmly at Ivar. ‘If we intend to maintain this town, or even keep it beyond one moon, we will need to settle. With land, and farms.’ He pushes ahead. Steady, unshakeable Ubbe. How he looks like Ragnar. ‘We cannot manage trade in sufficient amounts to keep our people fed, or bring ships with enough supplies -- especially if the Saxons blockade the rivers and sea ports. As they will do if they have any sense.’

‘And so, we will leave before they do. Come, brother, do not look at me like that.’ He is beyond gratified when Hvitserk rises from his seat and comes to the table, taking another chunk of meat he does not want just so that he can sit with his thigh pushed against Ubbe’s. 

‘You want to go back to Kattegat. For Lagertha.’ Hvitserk states. He says it as one would say that the sea is cold and wet. Pain is snarling in Ivar’s thighs and he wills it away. 

‘Do not you, brother? I am beginning to think you do not care about avenging Mother.’ 

Ivar stops himself from smiling when he talks about her. It is difficult to resist when he sees how it prickles Hvitserk. The desire that he feels in in his gut – to look at the declaration of quiet anger in Hvitserk’s eyes - is incredible. His fair brother is the only one of them who takes after their beautiful mother, especially when he is stung, or his heart is griping. Ragnar wounded her often through his lack of care; he didn’t hurt her because it pleased him. But Ivar – he would enjoy causing her pain. For allowing herself to be the only thing he had, and then leaving him alone in the world. For leaving behind brothers who could misplace their love for him, losing it in their commiseration and their forbearance. 

‘Of course I do.’ Hvitserk sharpens his tone. ‘We won’t be ready to face her after a sea crossing though.’

Ubbe shifts in his seat. ‘Harald.’

‘Yes, yes – now you are getting it!’

Ubbe ignores the barb, and Ivar lets out a rough burst of laughter, grinning widely. ‘It is a good plan. Hvitserk agrees with me, don’t you?’

Hvitserk leans forward with his elbows on his knees. ‘Harald has his own ambitions. Why would he want to help us? What would he gain from it?’

Ivar shrugs. ‘We have more cattle and slaves and precious objects than our ships can hold.’

Ubbe rolls his eyes. He won’t resist the call of such a patently inadequate answer, Ivar knows. ‘If Harald was interested in captured wealth, he’d have come raiding. Or gone to the Mediterranean with his brother and Björn.’ 

Ivar keeps his silence, swallowing his mirth and picking at his bread with focused indifference. He catches the lingering look that Ubbe gives the back of Hvitserk’s head before his brother speaks.

‘Are you going to gift her to Harald?’ 

Ivar draws down his eyebrows in mock ignorance. ‘Who?’

Ubbe gives him a level look. ‘Ardith.’

Ivar gestures at them both, as though praising clever children. ‘I had not thought of that. What a wonderful idea.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you're likely wondering when all of those interesting tags are going to come into force -- they will be getting quite the outing in the next chapter. I won't be sparing details. And that's what you all came here for anyway, right? It might then be the case that things are spread out over two chapters if it all seems a bit much. I'll be attaching extra warnings in the notes to make sure everyone's asses are safely covered, but, know now; shit's about to go down. 
> 
> The chapter is currently in progress, and I'm taking care with it so it likely won't be up tomorrow.


	9. Otte

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so, here goes. I’m reiterating the warning: this is a graphic rape scene and it’s focalised through the rapist. It was a challenge, and I enjoyed writing it -- I hope you enjoy reading it. You know what I mean.

‘Where is Ivar?’

Ubbe looks up from his task and the scrape of the grindstone stops. His axe is between his knees and his mouth twitches when he strokes the biting edge of the blade. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been at the boats all day.’ There’s a dark wet stripe on Ubbe’s thumb and he licks away the blood. Hvitserk smiles at the familiar habit. 

He takes a cup of wine and sits down, dandling his fingers through the candle flame. Then he stands again, trying not to pace and watches Ubbe resume his work. His brother doesn’t look at him but he feels Ubbe’s amusement.

‘What is it Hvitserk? You’re thinking very loudly and you’re hovering like someone striped your arse for you.’ 

‘I— ’

The door bangs open and Ivar hauls himself through it, followed closely by Ardith. Her only guard is his little brother, whom she trails faithfully. She is watching his legs drag in his wake. Hvitserk thinks it might be curiosity on her brow, but he doesn’t know her yet. He wants to learn what faces she wears and feel them with his fingers, to drag his tongue on her dirty skin -- but she’s Ivar’s. Ubbe and himself both see that.

Ivar pulls himself into a chair and Ardith hesitates; Hvitserk watches her dither until Ubbe shepherds her into a seat between the two of them and she settles, ruffling her feathers gently. They should let her bathe; her face is grimy, tracked with tears and dust and her clothes are filthy. It becomes her. He supposes that if Ivar too wanted her otherwise, she would be. Even so, Hvitserk feels an unwelcome burst of irritation in his gut at his older brother; Ubbe is gazing at her now, like himself, like they all do. As though the weariness and the responsibilities of the raid were nothing but someone else’s burden. None of them can help it, even Ivar. And Ubbe – he’s the kindest of the three of them, Hvitserk has always thought so. He is still not that kind. He makes moves for her when it costs him nothing to do so. Ardith is a slave; Margrethe was a slave. But Ardith is not Margrethe.

Ivar says something to her in Saxon and Hvitserk catches the sudden stiffness in the set of Ubbe’s shoulders, though his face is as blank as a winter sky. Ardith’s eyes flick to his elder brother too. He cannot ask, even as the question burns in his throat – what? What did you tell her? He keeps his breath still in his lungs and even his heartbeat seems like hooves striking hard ground. Hvitserk feels if he breaks the strange silence then she won’t do it – whatever it is that Ivar demanded, whatever it is that’s gathering in her tense limbs. 

Ardith stands and her hands come up to the laces at her shoulders, tugging at them until her tunic begins to split open at the back and fall away from her body. Hvitserk feels his groin tighten when her breasts are exposed; she is half turned towards Ubbe, anchored in his confused scrutiny. Her tunic is on the floor and her wings shiver and flap once when she unfolds them to the rafters. She seems to appreciate the opportunity to stretch them freely. Ivar is smirking, alone in his seat on the furthest side of the table.

Hvitserk watches Ubbe’s regard travel up and down Ardith’s body and when he catches the bruises on her ribs that Hvitserk knows are there, his brother blinks. Ubbe’s brows come down and Hvitserk is frozen in the quiet glare that he receives. It is the same look that is laid on Hvitserk’s sweating back when he throttles Margrethe, when he sinks his teeth into her and pulls her hair. It is Ubbe’s distaste and his interest, his submission to desires he has no wish to witness and absolute control over the game he set in motion himself.

Ardith merely waits. Beyond her fear of Ivar, Hvitserk understands why Ubbe’s patience holds her there; the thrilling confusion of it is always enough to keep him in place.

Ivar speaks up, and gestures towards Ardith. ‘She wants you to touch her, Ubbe.’

Ubbe doesn’t look at Ivar. ‘Of course she doesn’t want me to touch her.’ His tone is entirely flat. 

Ivar scoffs and rolls his eyes. ‘That isn’t what she told me.’ His voice is so woven with mockery most of the time, Hvitserk can scarcely tell if it’s genuine. ‘Well, Hvitserk, how about you? You’re always content with Ubbe’s leavings.’

Ivar has a way of being heard that only the eldest should possess, Hvitserk thinks. But Ubbe says nothing and Hvitserk feels shame – not for his older brother, but for himself. He does not know when he began to stop thinking of Ubbe as Ragnar’s heir but that moment has come and gone, and he does know - right now - that he is too greedy to dismiss a chance he may never get again.

Hvitserk stands up and Ardith startles, looking immediately to Ivar. His little brother just shakes his head at her. She twists to Ubbe, even beginning to stretch out a hand but Hvitserk fists her hair in a tight grip and she goes rigid. Her jaw is closed tight and he pushes his lips near her cheek and listens to her breath rapidly through her nose. At the edge of his gaze, Ubbe is motionless. Let him watch then.

Hvitserk spits in his palm and closes his fist, slicking his two middle fingers in the wet cup of his hand. Pushing his way into her breeches, he abruptly shoves two fingers inside her cunt. She stiffens and makes a sob and Hvitserk cannot resist dropping his face, his open mouth, against her bare shoulder to feel the sound. She’s scalding hot around him – by all the gods, he is desperate to wet his prick in her.

He watches her expression when he moves his fingers; she is trying to keep a blank face and her wet eyes are fixed on the wall above Ivar’s head. He thinks of that first night, when she had eaten and spoken with them, and Ivar’s horrible bark was ringing off the stone and he could not bear to hear it. He had looked her in the eye and then his brother’s panting had been the only sound between them; her face had the same blank cast then, that was neither pity nor humour nor fear—

Abruptly, he grasps her by the back of the neck and shoves her face first on the table, slamming her down on the wood. She raises her arms with a sharp cry, just in time to stop a black eye, and Hvitserk puts all his weight on the small of her back with his sticky palm. With the other he pulls her breeches down to her thighs and fumbles with his own laces; he cannot help the grunt at his own hand on his prick. 

He breathes, and he waits. Hvitserk wants to look at Ubbe, he wants -- gods, everything. Everything. To take her apart alone and with his hands around her throat, and yet to humiliate her, bent over the table, in front of them both. He yearns for Ubbe’s gaze – almost worried that he needs his approval for this to feel the right way.

Hvitserk looks to Ivar instead, because approval and permission are not the same thing. His face is split by the nastiest grin and his eyes are dancing in the guttering candlelight. It is too late -- Hvitserk knows that smile is for him, knows it is not for Ardith’s suffering. Ivar had caught Hvitserk tugging on himself more than once when they were younger, when he was dangling on the edge of manhood while his little brother was still waiting. He had been fascinated and Hvitserk had growled at him to go away, and had laughed when he had gone. Now, Ivar will watch -- and smile and laugh, at Hvitserk’s prick hanging out of his breeches and the sweat on his brow and the way he is panting. It’s too late. He cannot stop himself. 

The only noise she makes is when he first thrusts his prick all the way in her cunt. She bucks up and cries out like livestock being branded, and then is still and silent. She curls her arms over her head and clutches at her hair, and her wings are lifeless as they droop onto the ground. Hvitserk digs his fingers into the meat of her hips and fucks her fiercely; he hears himself groaning and hissing through his teeth and his whole body feels wet under the leather of his armour. 

The table scrapes on the stone floor with each snap of his hips -- each shove is as savage as he can make it, swollen with a frantic power he’s only spent on enemy warriors before now. Ubbe would never let him have Margrethe quite like this – even though he beats her and slaps her when she asks. He would never allow Hvitserk such a vicious, wonderful right, and he knows that is why Ubbe is not stopping him. He looks down at the blood on her thighs and his lower belly and, gods, Hvitserk longs to know if Ubbe’s prick is hard. His hands seize on her flesh and his fingernails carve red moons when he suddenly spasms and spills inside her, bellowing out his pleasure with bared teeth and closed eyes. 

Hvitserk lingers for as long as he dares inside her – it is a moment, and then he’s sliding out and tucking his prick away. Ivar’s quiet chuckle can be heard now that he’s stopped filling the room with his animal noise. He can choose not to care – he can, and he allows himself a small smile, gazing down at Ardith’s shuddering back. He can choose not to be so foolish as to show Ivar his belly. Hvitserk searches for Ubbe’s eyes, but his big brother is choosing to look at the floor.


	10. Tidligere

Ardith is hungry, dirty and exhausted. She runs her hands through her knotted hair and inspects her filthy wings. The feathers are grubby and feel gritty. It would take more courage than she has to ask for water and cloths to wash. She has wept all she can and feels disfigured by grief – she has the sense it has given her something, rather than hollowed her out. And now she can put it away.

A Northman as tall as a tree opens the door and she rises slowly. Ivar drags himself to the centre of the room and the other warrior leaves wordlessly.

Ivar moves so smoothly and naturally, seeming not the least encumbered. Ardith wonders how long it took for him to make the skill look like no skill at all; there must have been a time, when he was younger still, and he despaired to sit and watch his brothers run and play. How he must have struggled, when he first exchanged his arms for his legs.

He comes to rest with a quiet sigh and tilts his gaze up at her, as keen and patient as a hawk. 

‘Come. Sit with me.’ His voice is light, speculative -- it is not a request. 

Ardith takes a place on the ground as far away from him as she dares, which is still only the length of an arm. An instinct that she doesn’t need to examine tells her that being at his side is no safer than being his enemy; anyone who spends a few moments in his company surely feels so.

He regards her with amusement. ‘We will be leaving soon and returning home.’ His smile widens. ‘Well, almost home. You will see. And you will need to learn our language. We will be visiting a friend of mine before we can go back to Kattegat.’

She can only blink at him. Half of her heart has been given over to hope, that she will be kept for something – some imagined value she will have to learn to provide so that she can stay alive on the other side of the sea. The other half has been blackened, made near dead already, by an expectation that they will simply kill her because they can. Now, the full truth of slavery is being laid down in front of her, and the certainty of it puts courage and cold fear in her all at once. 

‘Who will I belong to?’ Her voice sounds rough and unlike herself.

Ivar’s face seems to open with delight. ‘Who would you prefer? Me, Hvitserk, or Ubbe?’ He lingers over the last name.

What trap is worse than one of our own making? Ardith does not know what to say, and feels such sudden weariness at a lifetime of anticipating the answers that Ivar wants to hear. It does not matter what response she makes now; in her heart, she knows the truth of it, and so does he. No one can keep him from her.

‘You.’

They both know her choice is no choice at all, and yet – one honest lie is enough. He looks at her and his face is new. There is, Ardith realises, a ghost that sits over Ivar’s features. It is there almost all of the time; it makes his brow low and his eyes dark. She has not seen him without it until now. It looks like pleasure in his face, or a triumph that is ugly and dangerous in some way she cannot yet see.

‘Then we should learn more of each other, don’t you think?’

Ardith cannot imagine that owners ever care to learn of their slaves, in this land or any other. She is striking a blind bargain. There is nothing else to do.

She nods and waits.

Ivar shifts forwards on his hands and Ardith flinches. She thinks displeasure flickers in his jaw so she settles and lets him move as close as he pleases. She is sitting cross-legged and his calf is pushed up against her bent knee. 

‘Are they heavy?’ Ivar glances over her shoulder.

Be honest, she thinks. Tell the truth until you can’t, and then he’ll know anyway.

‘No, not really. I can feel their weight but they’re not a burden.’ Ivar’s eyes travel over her face, curious and -- aggrieved, perhaps. It compels her onwards. ‘Have you ever held a bird in your hands, and looked at their wings? The bones are light and they bend more; they’re not heavy like the bones in your arms or your—’ 

She cuts herself off, looking at his mouth, his chest – just not his eyes.

Ivar smirks. ‘Legs? No, I don’t expect they would be.’

He ducks his head and searches for her gaze. ‘Your turn.’

She must ask. ‘Do they cause you pain?’

Ivar doesn’t hesitate for even a breath. ‘Yes, most of the time.’ 

Ardith cannot help but look at his legs. She remembers how they had felt – even in the fog of her terror, when Hvitserk had first brought her to him. They were thin and hard, wasted.

‘They hurt more when it rains.’ Ivar volunteers. 

She cannot quite sense his tone. There is a waiting strain, as if there’s a worse weakness behind the one he has admitted to.

‘Let me see.’ The barb is back in his voice. She isn’t quite sure what he wants her to do but he gestures impatiently for her to turn around. Every drop of life in her shrivels at the sheer danger of putting her back to him. She thinks of the knives at his belt and wills herself to turn and face the wall.

Ardith listens for each breath and each creak of leather. 

In her spine she feels the fine vibrations of Ivar handling her wings, stroking his fingers in between individual feathers and following the lines of quill and soft bone until he begins to prod through the slits in the back of her tunic. She cannot help but shift when he digs through the downy feathers to find the join of wing and skin; he says nothing that she can distinguish when he curves his other hand round to her stomach and pulls her back towards him. He is pushing and probing at the point of connection where her feathers begin to spread and melt into her skin, trying to see the workings only with his fingers. 

The focus is awful; she wants it to be over. She wants to know what he thinks.

He lets her go and she turns back to face him immediately. The air of gratification around him is so thick she could collect it in a jug. She must learn to look less frightened, Ardith thinks. The pleasure of it is like the indulgence of too much sleep: the more he gets, the more he will want. 

‘You want to see them, don’t you?’ The question is an accusation. And a fair one.

There will never be a right answer, so Ardith nods. ‘Yes, I do.’

Ivar looks briefly uncertain. She never expects to see the like again, and so the impression quickly disappears in the curl of his lip. He snarls silently and deftly unbuckles the straps around his calves, then begins to undo the belt at his waist and then his laces. He pauses with his hands gripping the top of his breeches. 

‘There is something you will do for me.’

Ardith reflexively glances at his groin and Ivar barks a mirthless laugh. ‘Do not worry.’ He licks his lower lip. ‘I am not like Hvitserk.’

She waits with her eyes on the floor while Ivar shuffles his breeches down his legs. She is not foolish enough to ask if he requires help.

‘Well.’ Ivar snaps 

Ardith suspects he is as grateful as she for the long tunic beneath his armour, for it sits decently in his lap.

They are like anyone else’s legs, but for their thinness. She looks to his face and his teeth are gritted, his palms fisted on the floor for balance. Slowly, she lifts her hands and places them gently just below his knee; what meat there is is hard and compacted. It feels cramped, and when she ventures to put a little weight behind her touch Ivar grunts.

They are not even as twisted as those of the oldest sisters had been: in the colder winter months, kneeling for prayer became difficult for them and Ardith had aided Sister Agnes in wrapping them in hot cloths for a little easement. If anyone has ever offered Ivar any remedy, it has been a long time since he accepted it. 

She sits back and places her hands in her lap. ‘I have seen worse.’ There is no wisdom in saying such a thing, Ardith feels certain. His callousness is disgusting, and the fear he puts in her is almost beyond bearing – but she is not indifferent to his misfortune. She had always been taught to carry sympathy with her.

For a moment, she thinks he will strike her; his face is quite unreadable but there is something in his arms and his chest that seems like half movement. 

Instead, he simply scoffs. ‘Have you?’ He begins to pull his breeches back up his legs with a little difficulty. She watches the scowl settle back in place.

Do not do it. He doesn’t want your help. Ardith takes a breath. ‘Let me.’ If she receives a fist, at least she will know. Ivar doesn’t stop her; he pushes up on his hands to lift his backside off the floor while she tugs his clothes back into place. 

Ivar considers her while her face is close to his. ‘You’re going to give yourself to Ubbe.’ He is nearly smiling. Ardith endures his dreadful gaze. ‘And when we return to Norway, you will learn to fly.’


	11. Ni

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this is gory. And what happens essentially amounts to torture. The mutilation tag is kicking in RIGHT NOW. There's screaming, pain and copious amounts of blood.

Ubbe knows what happens to the women during raids; he sees it and hears it but has no taste for it. There cannot be many Saxon women who live to birth the Viking bastards in their bellies; they’re unlikely to survive the first night and almost never survive the second. 

Even if Ardith was like other women, and – Ubbe thinks - she certainly is not, then this would still be different. Hvitserk is stuffing his prick back in his breeches and his face glows and swelters like embers; Ubbe feels the weight and the heat of his own desire low in his stomach and he cannot look any longer. Not at Hvitserk, as powerful and weak as he’s ever seen his little brother; nor at Ardith, shaking on the table and yet still as an idol -- waiting for more blood, for Hvitserk’s fear and love. Ubbe casts his eyes to the ground – he cannot look, and yet it is all he can see. Ivar’s low laughter slithers through the room and it is soft and quiet beneath the sound that calls and calls in his mind like the blast of a horn – Hvitserk’s panting and groaning and hissing and the wet slap of his hips against Ardith. On long cold nights when he watches Margrethe’s skin rise like gooseflesh under Hvitserk’s hot breath, Ubbe feels his own skin prickle, and he feels it now. 

Hvitserk is looking at him – for him – from across the room but before he lets his little brother have his gaze, he sets his expression and blockades the rising sensation in his throat. What is happening here? What is happening between them, now that victory and shame look exactly alike and Ubbe wants to pull his brother into an embrace and run him through all at once? It is not Ardith. It is Ivar. 

Ubbe catches Hvitserk’s gaze now and sets his feet under himself, and puts his hands to something, anything; he pours a cup of wine and Hvitserk’s hands tremble slightly when he takes it. Ubbe watches him lean against the wall and gulp it down. As gently as he can, he moves to pull Ardith’s breeches back up; she doesn’t flinch and Ubbe takes her tunic from the floor to wipe the blood and sweat and dirt from her hips and her backside. The red curves of Hvitserk’s fingernails are beautiful and bright on her pale skin. Margrethe doesn’t like it when they leave marks on her; when he and Hvitserk spar, Ubbe inspects the grazes and bruises that Hvitserk lands on him. By the light of a candle, he looks at them. He prods them one by one so that they sting and throb and he is always proud. 

Ivar drops from his chair with a thud. ‘Bring her here.’

Ubbe clenches his jaw and places his palm on Ardith’s back. ‘I’m taking her back to her room. You’re not going to stop me.’ He keeps Hvitserk at his rear. This is about Ivar. It is always about Ivar. 

‘Oh, I don’t think so brother. Hvitserk?’ Ivar leans around Ubbe. 

Hvitserk shoulders his way forward. There is pleasure and fever and pain in his face, and Ubbe’s heart hurts for him. 

‘What did you have in mind?’ Hvitserk’s voice is full of steel, and so clean of doubt that Ubbe knows it can only be for Ivar’s benefit. As if it were possible that anyone here but Ivar might have something to gain and nothing to lose; Hvitserk is giving himself up and Ubbe can say nothing. 

_You have your task. And, know this Ardith – there is always worse._

‘Bring her to me, and lay her on her front.’ 

Ubbe steps fully between Ardith and Hvitserk, shaking his head. He doesn’t trust himself to speak. And he cannot fight his brothers. He cannot.

Hvitserk comes toe to toe with him. His green eyes seem strange to Ubbe. There is reproach – for whom he doesn’t know. An unfamiliar heat rolls from Hvitserk in waves; it is something virginal and untapped, and Ubbe is not a coward but he will not let this become about loss. She is a war captive, a slave, Ubbe thinks. She is available for any pleasure. Later, he will make Hvitserk understand what he has done, what he is doing – he swears it. And for himself, when he can think and breathe again, Ubbe will find the correct set of words, the proper admonishment for his cruelty, and will chisel them in his mind like runes in rock, to upbraid his own shame. He will convince himself that this isn’t about his own half buried hunger, or Hvitserk’s new mastery, or the way his curiosity for Ivar’s madness couples itself with his love for his youngest brother. It is about preventing a fight. He lets Hvitserk take her.

Hvitserk hauls Ardith up from the table by the waist and Ubbe steps back. She gives a quiet groan when she is dumped none too gently on the stone floor. Ivar runs his hand lightly through her hair, pushing it away from her face. Ubbe can see how her lip is bloody from her own teeth, and her gaze is slack and blank. When Ivar draws his knife from his belt the noise seems to snag on whatever it is that is still living inside her. She tenses and Ubbe tightens himself, readies his nerve in response.

If she can help herself first, I can help her too.

Ardith rears up from the ground far quicker than any of them are prepared for and Ubbe can just understand her through the rattle of her gasping. ‘This isn’t what you said!’

She beats her wings hard and Hvitserk growls and throws his weight on her legs. It doesn’t stop her from putting her strength in her arms, and she is kicking and writhing while she flaps. A chair crashes to the ground and the tips of her feathers brush Ubbe’s face and chest -- the whole room breathes with the sturdy push of her great wings. Ivar does nothing. He watches. He regards Hvitserk trying to grab a handful of Ardith’s feathers and only coming away with a fist of white down and she is still fighting like a bird in a snare. Ubbe lurches forward in the same breath as Ivar: they both see Hvitserk sliding his dagger from his sheath and Ivar bellows first. 

‘No! She is not yours!’

Ivar hauls himself half across her back, planting his hand heavily in the dip of her spine between her wings. Ardith chokes when her chest strikes the floor and Ubbe watches her strength waning with relief and guilt churning in his gut. She beats her wings still but they are slowing and loosening, and they stop entirely when Ivar lays his whole body across her and pushes his face next to hers.

He hisses in Saxon. ‘You chose me. Me. And I have to be certain that you will not leave me.’

Ubbe looks to Hvitserk; he is crouching over Ardith’s feet and searching with his eyes the press of Ivar’s body on Ardith’s. The disgust and the confusion skim across Hvitserk’s brow, and it looks to Ubbe as if Hvitserk is witnessing true treachery for the first time in his life. 

‘Come and take her arms, Hvitserk.’ Ivar turns and holds Ubbe’s gaze as he speaks. _Do you see, brother? Do you see who is in charge here?_

Hvitserk swiftly takes the order, and steps around to take Ardith’s wrists. She cries out, trying to bend her elbows and draw her arms in but Hvitserk pulls fiercely. His knuckles are white and Ubbe knows the iron strength of his brother’s grip. 

Ivar shifts, clutches the stem of her right wing and begins to slice through it. 

It is not the blood that is hateful to Ubbe: it slides down her ribs and pools in her back, glistening and beautiful and dark red as garnets. Ardith is wailing, making a dreadful animal noise and Ubbe thinks his teeth will shatter. Hvitserk is leaning as far over as he can, rapt at the glint of exposed bone and the blood pouring in full spate over Ivar’s hands. The grinding of the blade on the bone drags smoothly through the noise of Ardith’s crying and it is endless. Ubbe is on the point of forcing a quicker, cleaner finish when the wing comes away fully in Ivar’s hand. He leaves it on the floor – instead he drags his palm down the right flank of Ardith’s shaking back, naked but for the great bloom of the wound that bleeds and bleeds. Ubbe thinks Ivar will stop his brother from copying his movements but he does not: Hvitserk kneels on Ardith’s wrists and slides his fingers through the coating of blood on her ribs. Ubbe watches his gentle touch dipping into the puddle of her spine, then dancing over the sawn off bone that shines like fresh snow. Ardith jerks and sobs and Hvitserk is panting: Ubbe catches the strange cloud that shifts over Ivar’s face as Hvitserk begins to lose himself again.

Ivar remains motionless, though makes a low noise in his throat when Hvitserk bends and swipes his tongue through the blood on Ardith’s back. Ubbe has never known what sound Ivar makes in his pleasure but that had sounded like interest, some thrill without name. Hvitserk is breathing as though he has run a mile and his teeth are dark with blood and his chin drips.

If you had ever wanted this, brother, we could. We could fight and bleed together. And touch until it hurts. Just tell me. Tell me.

Ubbe thinks of Margrethe and he feels sick with love for her, and full of fever and disappointment as he watches his brothers paw and slobber over Ardith like wolves. He shifts to ease the tight, hot feeling that boils in his veins and threatens to make his prick rise all the way.

‘Are you ready?’ Ivar smiles at Hvitserk. It is a smile of such danger, and Hvitserk bows his head to it. He shuffles back and takes Ardith’s wrists in his grip again, and Ivar begins to hack at Ardith’s body once more. 

She howls, and it is unbearable. The sound seems to come from some fathomless deep that makes Ubbe wonder whether the gods did put her here. If they did, they see the same dishonour that he sees; even if they did not, all the sons of Aslaug will pay for this, Ubbe is certain. 

‘Enough.’ Ubbe strides forward and as Hvitserk scowls up at him, he kicks him solidly in the jaw. Hvitserk tumbles to the side with a shout, prone and shocked for just long enough.

Ubbe kneels. ‘Ardith.’ He speaks as he does to Margrethe, putting his father’s soft charm in his voice. He gently lifts her head from the ground. She has the look of every slave he has ever known; he sees that same laceration on the soul that they all carry, the mark of every person who does not belong to themselves. His heart clenches anew for her. Ubbe brings his fist down swiftly on her temple and he sets her back on the floor. She will be unconscious for hours. 

Ivar tilts his head at Ubbe. He is prepared for the barb that he sees on Ivar’s lips, but his brother simply shrugs.

‘Just get it over with. And then I’ll take her back to her room.’ Ubbe pins Hvitserk with his gaze. ‘And you’re not going to stop me.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Ubbe needs a therapist.  
> Scratch that; I need a therapist. God.


	12. Avaldsnes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 56\. She sees, coming up a second time,  
> earth from the ocean, eternally green;  
> the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,  
> over the mountain hunting fish.
> 
> Seeress’s Prophecy, or Voluspa. Trans. by Caroline Larrington
> 
>  
> 
> They sat on the boarding house porch and saw the sun plunge into the same crack in the earth from which the night emerged. 
> 
> Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Avaldsnes, Norway 

\----

The price of dry land beneath his feet is the stench of flensed whale carcasses, and Ivar thinks it is worth it. Sea crossings are one more burden to be borne amongst a thousand others, and when the gods take him from Midgard he swears it will not be from the bottom of an ocean. 

Before they had disembarked – Harald’s attentive gaze guiding them into port until the keel bumped the jetty – Ivar had given Ardith into the care of two reluctant shieldmaidens. Ubbe and Hvitserk had minded her by turns for four days and nights, pulling back the furs to check on the bandages that Ubbe had wound about her. Ivar watched, his own stomach roiling with the waves, and did not help; Ardith had certainly found truth in that wine, for once the bleeding was staunched the wounds began to harden and close as quickly as she had said. Consciousness came lightly upon her and left her smoothly, and when she babbled like a babe with her eyes still closed, Ubbe wedged himself beside her to keep her from tipping over in the bottom of the boat and striking her head. Ivar smiled to see Hvitserk guard his jealousy poorly. 

None of them know where she is now. Ivar’s orders to the shieldmaidens had been clear; conceal her, tend to her, and guard her. And do not approach me to offer report within Harald’s hearing. Given the leisure to do so, Ivar could watch Ardith sleep and mutter until night’s candles have burnt out, but he has always known what restraint will buy him, has always had sense enough to know the difference between what is urgent and what is important. Ubbe and Hvitserk don’t believe him capable of observing the distinction, he is sure.

Ivar greets Harald first –- the old man’s straight backed diplomacy amuses him. Ivar sees how he polishes his confusion into a look of mild curiosity that Ubbe – the eldest – should not present himself before his younger brothers. 

‘You are all welcome to Avaldsnes, sons of Ragnar. I had thought that you would return to Kattegat, having business to attend to there.’ Harald’s words are at once light and heavy, and Ivar replicates his balanced blandness.

‘Indeed, we do. But a stinking, freezing dockside is not the place to discuss it.’

Harald raises his eyebrows, his poise eroding laughably quickly. Ivar grits his teeth when Ubbe presses his way forward and bumps against his crutch. ‘What my brother means is that we are weary and hungry, and would greatly appreciate the hospitality of your hall.’

‘Of course.’ Harald makes a self-satisfied sweep of the arm and in his mind’s eye Ivar sees Ubbe’s outstretched palm, Ubbe’s long braid, Ubbe’s complacent blue eyes -- the ghost of a would-be king disappears like mist on the swift turn of Harald’s heel, but Ivar could fucking howl with laughter until Ragnarok at the very thought. 

The hall is warm and dark, and steaming meat and hot bread are barely placed on the table before Hvitserk is plunging his fingers into anything he can reach. It is as well, Ivar thinks, that Hvitserk’s mouth will be full. Ubbe is only sipping from a cup of ale; more than ever, Ivar finds himself chafing against Ubbe’s serene lack of appetite, against the inconvenience of it.

‘So, what is it that you want? You did not come to Avaldsnes just for the venison.’ Harald seats himself, and casts an amused glance at Hvitserk. Ivar catches the half-smile that Ubbe sinks in his cup – his own stomach is still churning and the unfamiliar heat of the hall is making his skin prickle. He wonders if Ardith has awoken yet.

‘As you said, we have business in Kattegat. We are going to revenge ourselves on that bitch Lagertha for killing our mother.’ At the edge of his vision, Ivar notes Hvitserk’s new stillness. He does not need to witness the sanguine look that Ubbe throws across the table to his brother – they are ever seeking each other and Ivar is never disappointed. The more you stroke the cat’s tail, the more he raises his back.

Harald offers no hesitation, no pretense. ‘Why should I commit men to a quarrel not my own? Why should I ask them to risk their lives for someone else’s revenge obligation?’

Before Ivar can defeat his own irritation at Harald, before he can put honey in his voice, Ubbe speaks. ‘Because we want to see Lagertha removed from that throne, and so do you. If you support us in this, we will support your claim to the throne of Kattegat.’

Harald looks at them, one by one, from beneath his brows, though his steady regard lingers on Ivar the longest. He has the look of a man able to undeceive himself but unwilling to do so. Ivar bets he will not.

‘I would like to take some time to consider your offer, sons of Ragnar.’ He stands, gratification causing him to rise like driftwood on a wave. ‘In the meantime, you will be well attended to, and you must bathe and rest after your journey.’

\----------

The warmth of the hall does not follow them outside into the cold grey light of the late afternoon – Ivar hears the double beat of Ubbe and Hvitserk tracking close behind him. In the solitude of a quiet spot on the furthest side of the harbour, Ivar turns and waits. 

As Ubbe approaches, Ivar surges towards him; the flame on Ivar’s skin sinks into his limbs and roars through him, catching alight on the placid confusion of Ubbe’s blue eyes. Ivar dives beneath his guard and shoves him with his forearm across his throat and when Ubbe’s back strikes the wall of the long low sheds they are concealed amongst, he huffs through his nose like an angry boar.

Ivar growls in Ubbe’s face. ‘What was that?’

‘I could ask you the same question, Ivar.’ Ubbe dislodges Ivar’s elbow with a security of movement that makes him want to bury a knife in his brother’s throat. ‘You didn’t discuss any of this with us before we came to Harald. If we are going to get what we need from him, he must understand that we are united amongst ourselves.’ Ubbe almost smiles, looking down at him. ‘Or, at least, he must believe that is the case.’ Ivar does not move. 

Hvitserk is on the balls of his feet, hovering, ready. There is not enough room between Ubbe’s chest and Ivar’s own to slide even a hand, but Hvitserk is waiting. Ivar does not break his gaze with Ubbe, but he can sense it, smell it. That hanging patience -- Hvitserk is expecting to flow between them, to slither his body in their midst and make it stop. Ivar thinks of dark sheep’s blood draining into a bowl, of Hvitserk gathering their anger to himself to store away for an unknown battle. Ivar longs to strain this a little further, to see whom Hvitserk would face, and to whom he would trust his back. Would Hvitserk really press his life into the knife-blade space between his own vulnerable rear, and the easy violence in Ivar’s gut and his hands and his heart? Would he put his forehead against Ubbe's, and look for his gall and his disgust? Ivar believes in the image for a breath, no longer; of Hvitserk pulling the fury from Ubbe's body through the bridge of their hot-skinned faces, shoved solidly together like shield against shield. He doesn’t know, truly -- by the gods, he cannot predict now, as he has been wont to do, quite what his fair brother will choose. But he wants to find out. 

Two shieldmaidens come into view around the corner of the shed and they halt abruptly. Ivar rolls his jaw, and steps away from Ubbe. 

‘What is it?’

‘The girl. She is safely stowed. There is an unused hut; it is on the top reach of the slope that leads from the western end of the harbour up to the woods. And she is awake.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little lighter than the last chapter, you've no doubt noticed. And a necessary distraction too. Ardith will get her voice -- you have my word.
> 
>  
> 
> The historical Harald Finehair did not establish Avaldsnes as a seat until after 872, which is somewhat later than the Viking capture of York in 866. But, if Hirst can force you to suspend disbelief, so can I!
> 
>  
> 
> Also, there will be another related work featuring more weird shit between Ubbe, Hvitserk and Margrethe. I cannot leave those three alone.


	13. Ti

They fill the small space. Hvitserk thinks they must look quite foolish, three warriors crammed into a hut barely fit for one, and gathered quietly around the low pallet like pigs around a trough. When they are with her, something close and strange wraps around them all – Hvitserk knows the others feel it too. He cannot call it greed or desire alone: it is something worse, he thinks. He watches Ubbe approach Ardith, slowly and with his hands held aloft to show his empty palms. On her stomach, furs pulled up to her waist, she lies rigid; Hvitserk can see how she barely draws breath. She is small and frightened and dirty, and her wretched power draws them to her all the same. She is, he feels, rather like Ivar in that. 

Ubbe dips a cloth into the bowl of water at the foot of the bed and brings it dripping to the dried blood on her back; his hands are gentle and he coos absentmindedly as he does when the horses are fretting. Hvitserk kneels nearer her head, staying within her line of vision. He regards the trembling of her thin arms and her fists clutched at her chest. If he even raised his voice he thinks he might stop her heart and so he looks merely. He wipes his fingers, still greasy from the meat, on the front of his breeches but his hands remain in his lap. If Ivar wanted her dead of fright he might easily manage it himself, for she will be useful yet though quite how Hvitserk cannot guess. And if it is he that causes them all the loss of her unfathomable value, if he touches her as he longs to and her life destroys itself for fear of him –- well. Ivar would put him in the earth for far less.

His younger brother is somewhere over his left shoulder, silent and patient. Hvitserk thinks of Ivar’s body pressed against Ardith’s, the anchor of his broad chest and his dead legs smothering her when she had begun to find some fight in her belly, there in the church in York. Hvitserk feels it now, that weight – Ivar’s demands, Ivar’s judgments, Ivar’s plans. The sense that they all – Ubbe, Ardith, Harald, Lagertha, himself – are creeping down a path of Ivar’s choosing, swords ready at the movement of every shadow and the snap of every twig, has grown and grown until the anticipation is almost a taste on Hvitserk’s tongue. And he wonders -– just who is it that his little brother is really trying to ambush?

Ardith makes a small noise when Ubbe rubs the wet cloth over the stump of her left wing. Already, pale feathers are erupting through the twin wounds and he can see the marks of her fingernails on her skin. The gash that Ubbe put on his stomach in a sparring match had itched for weeks and he can only wonder how intolerable it would be to have something burst through his flesh like snowdrops through the earth. Ubbe scuffs her scratched skin with a little more force -- Hvitserk watches his face and he knows Ubbe’s thoughts had snagged on that memory too. Ardith closes her eyes, breathes out heavily through her mouth and Hvitserk’s lips part with hers. She uncurls her right arm from beneath her body and reaches over her shoulder, patting the striped skin that Ubbe has not yet touched. Here. Do it here.

Ubbe dips the cloth in the cool water once more, lays it on her raw skin and puts strength in his motions. The sound she makes is relief. It is but one step from pleasure and Ubbe’s lopsided smile sets Hvitserk’s gut clenching. He saw her first, he found her. Hvitserk wants to remind his big brother of his wife that waits for him in Kattegat. And he knows, he knows with the certainty of the sun in the sky that even with his hands on the body of another woman, Ubbe will simply turn to him and say – ‘my wife, brother? Just mine?’ Hvitserk keeps his silence. 

He listens to Ivar shifting behind him and it is easy to pretend that it is merely the creak of old wood. He watches Ubbe’s strong fingers on Ardith’s wilting body and it is easy still to pretend they are his own. Something he had once heard Ragnar say echoes between his ears. _If you run after two hares at the same time, you will catch neither._ Every good hunter knows it. And that, Hvitserk thinks, is why their father is dead. Advice that is too full of wisdom to be of use to anyone, least of all Ragnar himself. Ubbe is nearly finished; he wrings out the cloth in the bowl and swipes it over the back of her neck, lifting her hair with one hand. There is a fine golden down at her nape that Hvitserk fancies to feel against his mouth. It is nearly the colour of the stubble at the base of Ubbe’s skull. Ardith is clean and they will leave soon: Ivar often steals away to nurse his thoughts in solitude and returning here without him will be no challenge. Ubbe can track his path like a hound, and if Hvitserk can leave the hall unnoticed tonight and come to Ardith alone in the dark, he will be half disappointed to be followed only by silence. 

Ubbe tidies away the bowl and covers her over, and Hvitserk rises up on his haunches, readying to go. He hears Ivar placing his crutch against the wall and he knows their time is up. Hvitserk’s movement suddenly hooks Ardith’s attention and she regards him, wide eyed and wakeful. It is the face of her cunning and her courage, for it had been the look she had worn when she had tried to trick him, and bound them together in her old wings to save something not herself. He hates her. He lets himself think of the rise of her arse and the curve of her back beneath the furs. She must feel it between her legs, what he did to her. He wants to push open her thighs and look. He has had her first. He wants Ubbe and Ivar to see her red cunt and know that he did that -- but she looks up at him like she does not know him and his heart burns. He smiles at her instead. 

‘Leave us.’ Ivar speaks up from behind them. Ubbe catches Hvitserk’s gaze and pats him on the back as they turn to go; his brother keeps him walking with solid intent and Hvitserk can at last breathe when they are outside, under the fringe of wet black branches that drip on their shoulders.


	14. Elleve

In this place, solace is as hasty as a swallow; it is there, beautiful, red-throated and safe in the eaves. And then it is gone, flown away. Ardith wonders, are any of them ever happy – is Ubbe ever content? Hvitserk had smiled at her: can a man smile like that when he is at peace? Ivar sits on the pallet; she watches him settle with a grunt and arrange his legs stiffly in front of him. Her back feels sore and chafed from Ubbe’s hand, but it does not itch and she is grateful. 

Ivar seems in no hurry to speak. He gazes at the side of her face as he skims his fingers over her abused skin. Ardith closes her eyes against her fear and her fatigue. She doesn’t think she has the strength to battle Ivar, not now, not yet. On the sea crossing, she had slept and burned, and yet been more wakeful than she had allowed herself to seem. Isolation, she learnt, can only be stolen in a great boat full of Northmen, not purchased. Ubbe’s strong shoulder had been unexpected, an anchor she had not imagined any of them would care to provide. And it was worth the cold exposure to Hvitserk’s fingers and close breath simply to keep him from her sight, to deny him the sustenance of her recognition for a short while at least.

Ivar pulls the furs away entirely and Ardith opens her eyes to regard him over her shoulder. His dark head is bent over her back, tilting this way and that, prodding at the bruises he put there and flicking the new feathers with the tips of fingers. Ardith can scarcely comprehend her own fury – she has never felt the like, never needed to. But it is there, and it scorches her flesh from the inside out and it makes her speak when she would really rather give Ivar nothing at all.

‘Why—why did you do it?’

‘As I said.’ Ivar’s voice is soft and low and he doesn’t look at her face. ‘To be certain that you would not leave me.’

Ardith’s nails sting in the clutch of her palms. ‘There are better ways to ensure loyalty.’

‘Loyalty.’ Ivar says the word slowly, as if he is drinking it. ‘You have seen what loyalty looks like, between me and my brothers.’ Ardith can hear the shadow of a smile. ‘I want you to fear me first.’ His calloused fingers slip, unbearably light, over the tender skin of her back. ‘And then love me later. If you can.’

Ardith takes a shaky breath in through her nose. ‘Where would I have gone?’ She feels the stillness in his posture. ‘You say you wanted to be certain that I would not leave you.’ Slowly, carefully, Ardith rises on the small pallet, dragging the furs up to cover her naked chest. She forces herself to face him. Ardith will never look at him, nor hear his name, and not feel a deep terror in her very bones. Did Christ fear his Father, she wonders, for allowing his son to suffer so dreadfully? Did Christ fear Judas, and Peter – men he thought his brothers? Certainly, certainly, Christ loved them all. And this – she cannot allow this to be a waste of living.

‘I told you I could not fly. I was not lying. Where would I have gone?’

Ivar meets her eyes briefly. She tracks the swift diversion of his scrutiny, suddenly unfocused, the tick in his jaw. He returns to her after a struggle, she thinks – a moment of effortful thought. He yields his blue eyes to her, and hangs his gaze on her own. 

‘You are not just whole. You can make yourself new. I will always be a cripple, and there is nothing I can do to change that. And I am jealous.’

Everything in Ardith aches. ‘It took me a long time to learn to value what I have. And a lifetime locked away from the world to learn to ignore it.’ She thinks of the intimacy and love of her lost sisters, and their confidence in humility. Be calm. Take pains. Listen. ‘If you could change your legs, even for a short while, I imagine you’d do it.’ 

There is something prohibitive in Ivar’s expression. Beneath his self-pity is his self-pride; she is sure, it is deeper and stronger. _I will always be a cripple._ Ardith cannot truly believe in his sorrow for himself. She thinks of Sister Agnes. Take pains. ‘But I have no more power to change what I am than you do. Less, in fact.’ He looks at her with open curiosity. Whatever is being hard won, she feels, isn’t to her advantage. Perhaps nothing ever will be here. But he can take her life, or he can keep giving it to her. She persists. ‘If I cut my wings off, they grow back. If you cut your legs off, you’d be dead. But you wouldn’t be a cripple.’

Ivar smiles, wide and mirthless. ‘You are right. I do not know if I can bear to have someone around me who is right all the time.’ He looks at her from beneath his low brow, marking her movement. She cannot help but shift back from him, from her own misjudgement.

Ivar’s horrible laughter shatters the ice of her terror, and lets it flow more freely. ‘I am joking. You are very amusing.’ He pats his thigh, his shoulders still shaking with his strange merriment. ‘I am the youngest of all my brothers. I am used to other people telling me that they are right, and I am not.’ The flicker of light in Ivar’s eyes go out like a candle flame, and he is abruptly still and silent. He had been just so on the boat – hushed and unstirring. His gaze slides down to the fur clutched to her body. ‘I missed one.’

Before Ardith can utter a sound, Ivar snatches her wrist and pulls her towards him. The fur is discarded and he forces her over his lap on her back, chest pushed up to his scrutiny. The blankness of the rafters above her is unbearable, so she watches his face and wills calmness into her heart. _I am jealous._ The large bruise on her ribs is dark brown and yellowish and nearly gone – it doesn’t hurt when Ivar probes it. ‘Hvitserk did this. When he found you.’ His voice is tight and it isn’t a question but Ardith answers.

‘Yes.’ 

His attention passes up her chest to her mouth and doesn’t rest on her bare breasts. Relief bleeds through her, and expectation follows its course. Ivar is not Hvitserk. ‘What happened?’ His hand is loose on her ribs. 

‘I tried to save my sisters. Hvitserk was -- it didn’t work, and he was angry that I had tried to trick him. He let me know his anger.’

‘He tried to have you.’ Ivar grazes his rough palm up to her breast and cups it fully. There is concentration in his face and he licks his lips.

Ardith begins to tremble. She will never need to lie to Ivar, she thinks. He will always know her, always see her. Always have a way to find her in herself and to keep her with him. And can I not see him too?

_And then love me later. Love me._

‘Yes.’ She whispers as in her prayers, and she tries again. Louder. ‘Yes. He tried to have me and I let him think that I was willing. I took him to me and enclosed us both in my wings.’ She thinks of Hvitserk’s breath against her face and there is ice in her veins. Ivar’s hand is hot on her and he is as still as a penitent – as desperate and ignorant, she realises. ‘I thought it might be long enough, just a moment when he could not see or move and my sisters could run.’

Ivar drags his fingers away, catching her nipple quickly and lightly but not lingering. He pushes her roughly off his legs and he takes a sharp breath. Her weight must have been causing him pain. She opens her mouth to say – what, she doesn’t know. 

‘Don’t’, Ivar growls. He settles himself more comfortably on the bed, hauling himself to press his back against the wall with clenched jaw. Ardith covers herself; it suddenly feels like habit rather than need, but she pulls the fur up to her chin. He gathers himself, then looks at her with a smirk. It is dreadful, she thinks, and conceals his agony as well as if he had been weeping.

‘Why do you call them your sisters?’

Ardith fumbles with her thoughts for a moment. ‘We are all brothers and sisters in the eyes of God.’ It sounds foolish even to her own ears, to say such a thing here. Ivar’s brow wrinkles. ‘And I -- loved them like sisters.’

‘They kept you like a pet.’ He speaks with such simple contempt that Ardith could laugh as earnestly. She doesn’t think he would strike her for it but she will not risk it. Instead, she responds in kind.

‘As you do, you mean.’ She knows she struck within a limit when he only rolls his eyes.

‘Hvitserk was stupid enough to almost let you get the better of him, and like a bad rider he beat you for his own mistake.’ He snarls, sounding weary, Ardith thinks. ‘Ubbe stares after you and paws at you almost as much as he does Hvitserk. And your sisters’, Ivar gives a dismissive wave of his hand, and tips his head back against the wall, ‘they had you tethered and hooded like a hawk.’

Ivar has his eyes closed, seeming at ease. Ardith watches the movement beneath his lids, and something fierce wells up at the sight of his complacency and she wants to slap him, shove him, kick his helpless legs until he’s screaming. But he is giving something to her too, and Ardith feels irked at his endless bad faith and her own – little and hurting as it is. Listen, take pains. _Learn._

She thinks of Ubbe and Hvitserk passing looks like they were words, and she lets Ivar’s complaint paint an image in her mind, one that is green and guileless. It is of the kind of love she understands and which it seems Ivar does not, of Ubbe and Hvitserk holding one another and showing their care. Ardith regards Ivar’s quietude, his inaction, here before her – and it becomes, in the brightness of her memory, the shake of his head when Hvitserk had fisted his hand in her hair and her plea was received and not returned. Ivar’s idleness is never his disinterest, she realises. And she wonders, is the same true of Ubbe? And Hvitserk – she holds the show of his smile before herself and she is sure it is his own desire, and comes when he bids it. And yet. 

‘Why did you let Hvitserk do that to me?’ 

Ivar looks over at her, an eyebrow raised. His languor almost looks like pretence, but she cannot be sure. 

_To be certain that you would not leave me. Do not leave me._

Ardith tries again, holding his eye. ‘You knew very well that he wanted me, and you forced his hand on me. I thought I was yours.’

Ivar blinks at her. 

When a Sister enters an order, she is given a new name. Her old name is not known, and her old self is renewed. She loses and gains, and she is made indistinguishable. A heart is a heart, and a soul a soul in God’s eyes. And Ivar, Hvitserk, Ubbe – perhaps God doesn’t see them. She hardly knows where His mercy begins and ends anymore, but Ardith looks at one brother, and she glimpses another; searches for one soul and discovers two, three. They are indistinguishable, and yet she cannot possibly mistake one for another. And her sisters; they had had one small, hopeful desire amongst them and one love. Like a river it ran through them all, and up to the heavens in incense and prayer. Ardith is not sure she had ever shared that desire. The greed of these brothers, though, is endless. Perhaps, she thinks, she will have to learn to share that instead.

Ivar tips his head at her and, slowly, with strain in his arms and his dark face, he shuffles to her on his hands. He tucks her hair behind her ear and that tenderness, she is certain, costs him something. ‘You are mine.’ 

It is a strange relief to hear it, and a plain falsehood.

He is almost speaking into her mouth. ‘And I will prove it to you.’

She cannot unlatch her gaze from his own and he will not relinquish it. He fumbles with something below the line of her sight, and there is cold metal being pressed into her hand. It is the handle of a knife, the blade towards his body. 

‘There is something you will do for me.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This absolutely drained me.
> 
> And sweet, beastly Ubbe is next.


	15. Tolv

‘I have considered your proposal.’ Harald thumps his cup down loudly and Ubbe resists the desire to roll his eyes. The hall is hot and loud and Ubbe wants his bed, but he gives the gesture the attention it requires – not, he thinks, the attention it deserves. He notes that Ivar looks up, expectation sitting tense around his mouth, meat waiting in his fingers. Harald has more than a bellyful of strong drink and though Ubbe is certain the old man made his decision as soon as Ivar set foot on the jetty, there is value in binding a cause in this manner -- a glowing hall heaving with warm, merry bodies and flowing ale makes fast a partnership in good cheer and hope, if not in trust. Nevertheless, Ubbe thinks, he would prefer to hammer out such an agreement when Harald is not sloshing his drink around like a boy still wet behind the ears. 

‘First, I would like to introduce you all to someone. My beautiful wife, Astrid.’ Harald throws his arm out and Lagertha’s magnificent lover strides from a dark corner of the room. She has the lustre of a jewel, deep and bright, and Ubbe can well understand why Lagertha should adore such a woman. He imagines how they would look, open limbs and mouths tumbling together -- he is perturbed, then, at the thought of Harald grunting on top of her, and so he understands, too, why there is sorrow in her eyes. She smiles graciously and seats herself next to her husband.

Ivar looks as if he has swallowed a mouthful of seawater. Ubbe watches him raise his cup and offer congratulations through gritted teeth, though if Harald notes the lack of sincerity he doesn’t acknowledge it. Astrid holds Ivar’s steady regard for a long moment. There is a call thrown out, whether from his brother to Astrid or the other way around Ubbe cannot quite say – but he sees silent contact made in the open ground between them. She is not here by choice, and where Harald believes he has an advantage, Ivar sees opportunity. And for his part, Ubbe only anticipates risk. How far can this bargain be made to go now, he thinks, when they need Harald more than he needs them?

‘We all wish you well in your new marriage.’ Ubbe hooks Hvitserk’s attention, who is hunched over a bowl of something. He nods towards Harald with a face full of food and disinterest, and Ubbe uses all of his considerable restraint not to laugh as he tips his cup in the direction of the new bridegroom’s swollen pride. He wonders to himself that it doesn’t knock Astrid from her chair. 

‘I had already summoned my kinsmen here for my marriage.’ Harald leans forward in his seat, casting his words carefully, deliberately across the table to them all, to Ivar, himself, even Hvitserk. His eyes seem suddenly sharper than a moment or two before and Ubbe sets a mark down in his mind; a notch cut in wood to remind himself, that Harald is always playing king, that his ambition has roots as deep as the world-tree. ‘And as they are already here, I may as well make use of them. You will have my support, and I will have yours.’

Ivar grins as Harald stands, and repeats as much to the roaring, cheering hall. His little brother throws back his ale in that way of his, a fierce pleasure that always looks like half dissatisfaction to Ubbe – and which strange quality he only shared with one person besides, their father. Hvitserk raises his cup, to the pleasure of the fight that is coming if nothing else. 

And Ardith. Ubbe regards Ivar, and can almost hear the turning and rushing of his thoughts: when Harald’s weakness for women was going unanswered, gifting her to him would have been the most useful diversion imaginable. The three of them, Ubbe thinks wryly, are each proof of that. And now? He chews on some bread or some meat -- he hardly knows, not tasting what he brings unthinking to his mouth, and observes Ivar do the same. His brother cannot mean to set a spy in Harald’s hall who doesn’t even speak their language, and a seductress she is not. But then, Ubbe supposes, as he fondly watches Hvitserk piling two, then three fistfuls of food onto a plate, that she doesn’t need to be. 

Ubbe turns at the sudden swell in noise: Harald is taking Astrid by the hand and leading her away, to their bed no doubt, to the raucous laughter and howling of his guests. His kinsmen bang their cups on the tables, whooping and shouting their approval. Astrid acknowledges none of it, retreating into the rear of the hall with her head held aloft. Margrethe comes to his mind unbidden, and he hastily refills his cup, pouring ale down his throat until the crack in his chest might at least, he thinks, be half full. He swipes his sleeve across his wet beard and searches for Hvitserk’s face at the table. His seat is empty; Ubbe doesn’t need to cast a look around the hall to discover that Hvitserk isn’t there. He considers, the thought quite new to him, that his little brother is lucky to be a middle son. Neglect can sometimes be turned to profit. 

Ivar’s eyes sear the back of his head as Ubbe strides out into the night but the flicker of shame is there and gone, and he breaks into a run along the harbour front. Even as he begins to take the slope to the hut, he doesn’t know what he will do when he finds his brother there -- he is half desire and half doubt, and if he has to watch Hvitserk burying himself in Ardith again he might just drag him away by the scruff of the neck and fill her with his own prick. 

When Ubbe bursts through the door, he finds Ardith alone, dressed and sitting up with a plate of food.

‘Has Hvitserk been here?’

Ardith puts down the bread that is halfway to her mouth. Ubbe has the impression that she’s trying not to smile.

‘Does Ivar know you speak my language?’ 

Ubbe clenches his jaw, his chest feeling tight. ‘No, he doesn’t.’ He regards her brighter eyes, and her cheeks that have more colour. She looks in better health. ‘Has Hvitserk been here?’

Ardith puts her plate to the side. ‘Yes. He brought me some food. He didn’t stay.’ Ubbe feels an irresponsible pleasure unfurl inside him, that Hvitserk still has the power to surprise him. Ardith doesn’t seem the least taken aback. ‘Though he wanted to. He wished to speak to me, I think. He is the only one of you that doesn’t know any Saxon.’ It is somewhere between a statement and a question, and Ubbe just nods. He yearns to hunt him down, to push their heads together and talk into the night -- but what jealousy brought Ubbe here must now by turns be Hvitserk’s, knowing where his tracks must lead his big brother, knowing that Ubbe’s devotion would carry him through the door of Ardith’s hut, but not back out again. Hvitserk might wish to be alone tonight, but Ubbe does not. 

‘Do you want some company?’ 

Ardith is quick. ‘Do I have a choice?’

It is an absurd answer but he gives it anyway. ‘Yes.’ 

Ubbe cannot quite fathom the expression on her face, and she is only a little longer in answering. 

‘Close the door. It is cold enough in here.’

He smirks to himself as he shuts and bars the door; she is beginning to sound like Ivar already.

There is nowhere to sit but the small bed. Ubbe watches Ardith shuffle back to make a little room, though she doesn’t seem entirely content to give it. This is the first opportunity he has had to be alone with her and to speak with her, so he sits on the dusty floor. She looks down at him, bewilderment plain on her brow, and Ubbe is pleased it is not fear. Yet, he worries, as he smiles with just a corner of his mouth, that her caution is beginning to disappear. 

‘You do not need to sit on the floor.’ Her gentleness, if gentleness it is, is appalling. Ubbe thinks of her outstretched hand, the plea he had not answered, when Hvitserk had had her in front of them. It had been the look on his little brother’s face that had stopped him. But Hvitserk is not here, and Ubbe’s guilt fills the absence.

Ardith does not shrink from him when he rises, as tall as he must seem; he sits on the end of the pallet, one knee cocked to the side to face her. There is something new in her, Ubbe thinks – not for the first time, he wonders what Ivar can have said to her and a feeling at once bitter and proud smoulders in his stomach. If he asked her, she wouldn’t give him honesty, he is sure. Perhaps her caution is being replaced with something else.

‘Why did you pretend not to understand my language?’ 

Ardith is direct, holding him fast with a focus he’s not yet seen in her. Ubbe need not have worried about having to gently lure her out. Putting her to spy on _Harald_ is, he considers, perhaps not what Ivar intends at all. And is there anything he can tell her that Ivar does not already know, or cannot guess? It will be a great relief, he thinks, and little danger to speak his mind – all of it – to someone who wants to hear it.

‘Ivar and I, we often disagree. It seemed wise to keep my own counsel.’ 

‘To conceal an advantage, you mean.’ Her smile is small, frank. ‘Ivar is – it is difficult to hide anything from him.’ 

Ubbe knows it. Ardith offers her ale to him, and he has no desire for more but he takes it. ‘He is the youngest of us, and the best at spotting a weakness.’ He takes a warm mouthful, contemplating the bottom of the cup. ‘He always has been.’

She nods. She knows it too, and though he wants to ask how, he won’t. Not yet.  
‘There are only three of you?’

‘No, I am the eldest of my mother’s sons but we have an older half-brother. From our father’s first marriage. His name is Björn.’ 

Ubbe watches her expression bloom with interest, shrewd and genuine both, he thinks. 

‘Is he like you?’ 

Ubbe can’t help snorting. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Ivar would laugh at the question, and his answer. ‘We were not raised together but we both have our father’s curiosity.’ Ubbe calls Ragnar to his mind, his uncommon love for the monk Athelstan – one foot in their world and one in his own. And then, Floki’s envy, and where it had led them all. He remembers, very clearly, hunting for the boat builder through the wilds with Hvitserk when they were children. He didn’t really understand then why they should have done so, but for the simple truth of obeying any order that Ragnar gave. ‘He would have liked you, our father. He would have found you as interesting as we all do.’ 

He has the sense that his smile doesn’t look quite as he intends, for she regards him with something like sadness. 

‘Your father is dead?’ 

‘Yes. And our mother. And our brother, Sigurd.’ Ubbe shifts, moving to lean back against the wall, minding Ardith as he moves slowly. There is a part of him that will long to protect Ivar until his last breath, and he is not certain why he does not tell her how Sigurd was killed. Is it a kindness to her, or to Ivar? It might, he supposes, simply be his own grief. Ubbe is grateful beyond words when Ardith merely nods, and accepts his losses with silent acknowledgement.

‘And so, you disagree often with Ivar.’ When she searches for his eyes, voice soft, he realises he has been gazing, unseeing, at his own lap. Gods, how selfish she must think he is; what cost he has put her to, and yet she moves from the dead to the living for his sake. ‘What about Hvitserk? He is your favourite brother, I think?’

The lightness in her voice strikes a slightly strained note, but he sets it aside. He sees what indulgence she is offering, to let him talk about the one of them she must least wish to think of. And he sees too what she is after, how she wants to know him -- know all of them. 

He tries to imagine what weakness might look like in her eyes, but he cannot, and so he tells her the truth. ‘Yes, Hvitserk is my favourite brother.’ It is the first time he has ever said it aloud. ‘We are very close.’ Ubbe’s heart aches and Ardith watches him, waiting. ‘We both wanted the same woman, both fell in love with her. I got to marry her because I am the eldest, but it pained me to see how he longed for her.’ Ardith tilts her head at him, not hiding her fascination. His tongue keeps moving. ‘He loves her more, I think. More than I do.’ Nor has he ever said that, even to Hvitserk. ‘So we decided to share her. She agreed, was more than happy to take Hvitserk to our bed.’ Ardith seems able to conceal her shock, mostly. Ubbe can’t resist laughing a little at the edge of confusion in her expression. She blushes, grinning still. ‘But I was happier. Hvitserk loves Margrethe more than I do, and I love him more than I do my own wife.’

There is a long silence while Ardith seems to contemplate the furs of the bed with great interest. When she speaks, finally, Ubbe feels the words like a fist.

‘If you love Hvitserk as much as you claim, you would not have allowed Ivar to use him as he did.’ Ardith speaks calmly, plainly. ‘If you loved Hvitserk more than anyone, more than Ivar, or Margrethe, or yourself, you’d have raped me instead.’

That, Ubbe knows now, is what weakness looks like in her eyes. And if he is angry, it is because she is right. 

Ubbe searches her face. What can he say to her, except what has been in his mind and his heart since York? That he _is_ weak. That he should have stopped his brothers but didn’t. That he could, at least, have beat Hvitserk until he no longer had the strength or the anger to fuck her, and that his older brothers fighting over a slave would have satisfied Ivar as well as seeing one of them making a fool of himself with his prick in his hand. That he wanted to fuck her himself, but that he enjoyed watching Hvitserk forcing his way inside her and taking something for his own. That his own wife choosing to share herself is not the same as Ubbe deciding to hand her over when it pleases _him._ When it pleases his little brother. 

Perhaps, Ubbe thinks, he will do just as he wants. Ardith could not stop him – now, right now, he could throw her over on her stomach and pull her arse up and tear into her. That she could even have Hvitserk’s defence in mind at all is what addles him, what freezes the fury in him even at the very moment of its first spark. And she is not even accusing him of stupidity, or brutality beyond its need. Aslaug is dead, Ragnar is dead, Sigurd is dead. And this is what is left – the three of them, and this is what his love looks like. Ardith is showing him his selfishness. 

He wishes he had left, and followed Hvitserk away into the night when his track was still fresh. 

Ardith flinches when he stands suddenly, making for the door. He turns to her, unease finally beginning to show in her face.  
‘I am sorry that you are here. You should be – ’ Ubbe thinks of her home, of the raid. The emptied church, his sword in his hand and all the dead lying about him. ‘You should be somewhere else. Somewhere safe.’

‘Safe? Where in this world is safe? I might as well be here as in the convent.’ She looks urgent and miserable, suddenly. And lonely. ‘There was a sea between us, and you found me anyway. And am I not as safe as I can be? Here with you?’

The honest answer to her question sits like a chunk of hard bread in his throat, too soon swallowed and struggling to come back up or go down. Instead, he tells her what he told Margrethe, when she had asked very near the same thing after their marriage. 

‘Yes.’ The way that Ardith is looking at him – as Margrethe has looked at him, as Ivar too when they were younger - calls to something inside him, something at once fearless and afraid. ‘Yes, you are safe with me. I won’t hurt you.’

He cannot speak for his brothers, and they both know it. But, it seems to be enough. For now. 

‘Then will you do something for me?’ 

She looks so sincere, sounds so ardent, that Ubbe understands – fully, desperately - why Ivar wants her for himself, and how she has so charmed Hvitserk. Ubbe inclines his head. ‘That depends on what it is you want.’

‘Take this off.’ Ardith gestures to his leathers. ‘And your tunic.’ 

Ubbe doesn’t move. ‘What for?’

Ardith drops his gaze with a small smile. Ubbe marvels that only now should she really begin to lack courage. ‘I feel bare and unusual without my wings. ’ She meets his eyes. ‘Even without them, you all look at me like I am the one that is strange. It is you that is strange to me.’ Ubbe grins despite himself. ‘Twenty two summers in a convent and the only body I have known is my own.’

Without a word, Ubbe begins to unlace his leather armour, shucking it over his head when the sides are loose enough. It is much colder here than in the hall – Ardith watches him silently, and her keen focus brings gooseflesh out on his skin. There is something warm and heavy in his stomach, and he feels foolish and relieved when he can briefly hide his hot face in his tunic as he pulls it off. Bare chested, he waits. 

Ardith is unmoving, scrutinizing the scars on his body, and Ubbe can feel his prick beginning to harden. Even if he could pour cold water on his desire, he thinks, he would not do so. 

Ardith pats the bed before her. ‘Sit down.’ Her voice is soft, cautious. ‘Face away from me.’

Ubbe hesitates and Ardith shows her amusement then, full and serious. ‘You cannot think I’m a danger to you?’

It could be his warrior’s pride, or her sweet false fragility, or yet the urgency for risk that lives in his gut, that makes him sit down as she bids. All three, he thinks, and the rising greed in him too. Ubbe listens to her movement behind him, and feels her shift forward. Against his better judgment, his eyes slip shut when she places her hand on the back of his shoulder. Her fingers are firm, pushing against his shoulder blade, just at the spot where her wings are slowly emerging through her own skin. He remembers how it had felt, how it had burned under his wet hands.

‘Am I as strange as you thought?’ Ubbe hears a tenderness in his own voice he hadn’t quite intended.

‘Yes.’ Ardith half laughs and his gut clenches to hear it. She grips his upper arm and lifts it out to the side, pressing along the line of the bone when it shifts under his skin. ‘You look…naked.’ 

Ubbe open his eyes and turns his head, cocking a brow good-naturedly. He catches her smile in the corner of his sight.

‘You know what I mean.’ She places her warm palm flat on his other shoulder blade, and her sigh wafts over his skin. ‘Or, perhaps you don’t.’ Ubbe senses the bed dip beneath him. ‘Still, this is stranger.’ She sweeps his long braid up and tugs on it gently, and his lips part on a silent groan. Ubbe thinks of Hvitserk then – all of the times his little brother has yanked on his hair to win a wrestling bout, to gain his attention in a way neither Sigurd nor Ivar ever ventured to. And then -- gods, then, Hvitserk’s calm smirk and his fist on Ubbe’s jaw when Margrethe’s wild, fond resentment had finally pushed his desire up against his brother’s.

Ardith drapes his braid over his shoulder and it tickles his chest. He feels her nails scraping lightly over the shaved hair at the back of his head. 

‘Hvitserk was the first Northman I’d ever seen.’ Ubbe clamps his teeth tightly together when her fingers brush the tops of his ears. ‘When we first laid eyes on each other, I’m not sure who was more frightened.’

Ubbe thinks of what Hvitserk had asked Ivar when she was discovered, and so he turns to ask her himself. ‘Are you a valkyrja?’

He gets the response he expected. 

‘A valkyrja?’ Ardith repeats the word with difficulty. ‘What is that?’

Ubbe smiles at her kindly. ‘Never mind.’ He shifts to face her fully, pressing his knee against hers. She watches him with care, he thinks, but she doesn’t move away. ‘If your back is still sore, I can do something to help.’ 

He leans over to the candles on the low ledge by the bed and dips his fingers in the pool of warm tallow. He reaches out to her, careful and hopeful, with animal grease dripping down his hand. 

She nods, on the edge, it seems to Ubbe, of refusing. She pulls her tunic forward over her head, keeping it to her breasts when she rises to her knees and repositions. Her skin is raw and red, two rings of scorched flesh around her feathers, beautiful and white, bursting from her body. Ardith twinges when he first dabs on the grease; it melts and drips down her back as soon as it meets her hot skin. Ubbe gathers more in his palm and daubs it thoroughly, rubbing it in. 

Ardith hangs her head, breathing loudly through her nose. Ubbe cannot tell if he is hurting her or if she is pleased. He speaks, low and mild. ‘Shall I stop?’ 

He gets the answer he wants. 

‘No.’ Her voice is muffled, and made rough with pain. ‘It’s helping. Or, it will help. Some lavender oil would be better.’

Ubbe observes the gentle rise and fall of her back, the movement of her ribs with her breath. He uses the last of the tallow, going as softly as he can. ‘You have some skill with healing?’

‘A little. What the sisters taught me.’

Ubbe nods, though she cannot see it. There is agony and joy both in her voice, when she speaks of her sisters, her family. He understands.

‘What else did they teach you?’

‘I can spin and weave, and cook. We would sing every day. Sister Agnes told me I had a sweet voice. And I can read and write.’

Ubbe uses his own tunic to swipe the tracks of grease from her lower back, lingering simply for the need to keep going. ‘Perhaps you can teach me.’ 

Ardith turns to look at him over her shoulder. He dares to think she regards him affectionately. 

‘If you teach me, I will teach you.’ Ardith’s waking smile recedes then. ‘Ivar said I needed to learn your language.’

Ubbe’s hand is still pressed against her skin, warm and sticky just above the line of her breeches. His prick throbs and he cannot let this moment unravel. Is there a better way to shatter the strength of fellow weakness, to sunder closeness, than to call Ivar into the room like a great black draugr? Ubbe will not talk about him – he will not let her lead him there. 

He forces humour into his voice. ‘I cannot promise I will be a good teacher. The opposite, I am sure.’ 

Ardith shakes her head with amusement, and if her fondness is feigned, Ubbe is careless now of the possibility. ‘I am no scholar myself.’ She moves to face him now, clutching her clothing to her chest still. Ubbe lets his hand drag from her skin with difficulty. ‘And Hvitserk. He should not be left out. If I help him too, perhaps we may meet in the middle a little faster.’ 

He wonders where his brother can be tonight, and hopes he has found comfort somewhere, with someone. Ubbe lets his eyes travel over Ardith, her patient eyes, her lips, her hair, her throat. He considers what she has done, what she does now and what she will do - for himself, and for them all. He knows that nowhere will Hvitserk have found two people more capable of listening to him, loving him, suffering for him, indulging him, than the two people in this room.

‘You _are_ strange, Ardith.’ Ubbe feels that he is letting go of his wisdom as the words leave his mouth, but they can both rise and disappear like breath on cold winter air and he will be content. ‘And can you not see why we would want you for ourselves?’ 

Before she can protest, he pushes forward and kisses her firmly. She opens her mouth, not to speak but to offer back the stroke of her own lips. Ubbe heaves himself over her, blood and desire and heat rising almost unbearably inside him. He takes no note of her fumbling until there is a cold blade at his throat and he stiffens with an old and different instinct.

There is anger on her brow and around her eyes, and their noses brush lightly. Ubbe swallows. It is one of Ivar’s knives. ‘You’re holding the blade too high.’ 

Ardith’s eyes flicker and the bite of her fury smooths out, just a little. He can feel her loosen, so slight he could not see it otherwise but that he is holding himself so carefully above her every breath and twitch skims over his skin like a flat stone over the water. 

‘If you ever have to use it…’ Ubbe props himself up on the strength of his right arm and his too-wide knees, and grasps Ardith’s fist with his left. He drags the blade a little lower on his throat, and keeps the pressure there. ‘There is a channel of blood here.’ He can’t help noticing how fine and light her eyelashes are. ‘If you open it, it doesn’t close again until there’s nothing left.’

He releases her fist, and the blade drops down to his collarbone without his support. It nicks his skin and the sting forces the breath out of his lungs sharply. 

Ardith is struggling to maintain her indignation, he thinks. She doesn’t need to let go of the knife -- if he is speaking truth to himself, he doesn’t want her to. His prick is like iron. He wonders, then, if she still thinks him weak. If she thinks Hvitserk weak. The worst thing he can do now, is to do nothing. 

Ubbe backs away from her, slowly, precisely. He kneels on the floor, forearms on the edge of the bed, gazing up at her. She has let go of her tunic and her breasts are small and sweet, and how he longs to suck them one after the other into his mouth. He reaches for her empty hand; she takes his fingers and allows herself to be pulled forward until she is sitting with her feet on the floor. Her face is all turmoil; he is sure it is showing him his own. 

He brings her hand to his braid, setting her grasp firmly around its length near the point where it flows from his head. Her mouth is open and he tracks the movement of her eyes, the slight drawing down of her eyebrows, every trace of chagrin and disorder and confusion that stirs in her. Ubbe turns his head, cants forward, tugs against her hold; she reins him back and he smiles up at her, licking his lips. 

The knife is loose in her other hand, but he takes her wrist and makes her press it to his neck. Ubbe is nearly panting and there is sweat between his shoulder blades. He remains as still as he can, and his limbs ache with the wait. His question is almost a whisper. ‘Do you want me to go?’ 

Ardith’s fingers tighten their grip on his hair, and she looks and looks. Finally, she shakes her head. ‘No.’

He leans forward, bringing his lips to her chest; he feels the pull at the back of his head but she permits him to place a kiss on the flat bone between her breasts. Ardith is watching him, rapt, and relenting and fighting him in the same breath. It is good, he thinks. Good that she will not lower her shield. Let him be denied. Let him earn her trust, and if he never has her, he never has her. But she will do this for him. Margrethe would never use any knife he put in her soft hand. The violence in him wants some back, wants it repaid -- he wants to know that Ardith might really sink a knife in his throat. And scrapes and bruises from sparring are simply not the same thing -- though, he thinks, if Hvitserk is as in love with Ardith as he suspects, then what pleasure he will have to watch his big brother humbled willingly at her feet. 

Ubbe brushes his beard over her pale skin and she arches her back, and when he ducks his head to take her nipple in his mouth she gasps and pushes her chest out helplessly. He listens to her breathing, fast and shaky, and he presses himself to her more closely. The sharpness of the blade pinches at his neck and he feels it in his prick; Ubbe realises how wet his palms are when he brings one to his groin to rub against the tight front of his breeches, and the other to grasp Ardith’s waist. He is moaning against her skin and, by all the gods, making such a noise in his throat as he suckles on her, pulling and pulling with his mouth like a babe at the teat. 

Suddenly, Ardith hauls him away. ‘Enough.’ Her eyes are wet and her cheeks ruddy, and her breath cannot come quick enough for her. Ubbe holds her hips steady in both hands; the knife clatters to the floor and there is one small hand on his braid and one shoved against his shoulder.

‘As you say.’ Ubbe yearns to pull her hips to him and bring her into his lap. ‘Be calm.’ He puts his forehead against her chest, closing his eyes and willing his own heart to slow too. ‘I said I wouldn’t hurt you, and I won’t.’ He is desperate to spend; if she asks him to leave he’ll get five paces beyond the door before he finds a tree to lean against and strips his prick with his fist. 

Ubbe watches her cover her face with her hands; the peace she has been struggling to keep has been chased away by him and he is not entirely sorry. His blood is burning and it hurts wonderfully. He brings his head up through the gap of her arms and brushes his lips against her jaw, her cheek, pushing against her hands with his nose to find her ear. ‘Do you want me to go?’ 

Once more, she shakes her head, and then lays her arms over his shoulders and embraces him – to mollify herself or him, he isn’t certain. Ubbe skims his hands up her sides, only brushing the edges of her breasts, and then grazes his fingertips, to his surprise, through hair under her arms. He takes in a sharp breath without intention, and grips her lightly by the shoulders to lever her away a little. 

Margrethe always tends to the hair on her body, as most do, and Ubbe is unused to its feel; apparently, it is a habit that Saxon women do not share. Little wonder she found his braid so strange. 

He makes her meet his eyes. She looks forlorn, and wanting, and frightened. ‘I want you, Ardith. I won’t – put myself inside you. You have my word.’ He smooths his fingers up her back. ‘I want to lay you down.’ 

She swallows, and her gaze ranges over his face. ‘You can lay me down. But don’t…’ 

Ubbe tips his head at her, waiting.

‘Don’t take off your breeches. Or mine.’

‘That wasn’t what I had in mind.’ He smiles gently at her.

He only notices now how sharply his knees are paining him and he is grateful for the furs on the bed when he rises and pulls himself over her. She falls back as he unfolds himself. He doesn’t have the time or the care to resist kissing her, on a sword’s edge as he is, but she pushes up to his open mouth with hers and, gods, he needs to do this now. Ubbe grasps both of her slim hands in his right, and pins them above her head. Her fingers tighten painfully around his but her breathing becomes more measured when he places a slow kiss on her forehead. 

Nudging his face against the inside of her elbow, he nips at her, and slips his tongue out against the soft skin. He tastes salt, and drags his mouth lower and lower. The reddish hair under her arms tickles his face and he groans; he breathes heavily and pushes his lips harder against her. His own fist clenches around her trapped hands and he thrusts his hips thoughtlessly, again and again, on her hip. Ubbe huffs with his lips wide and his nose shoved into her under arm, and there is the scent of fresh sweat in his nostrils and the prickle of hair and his gut is as taut as a bowstring as he heaves and grinds his prick on her. Ardith shifts, then, and puts a thigh between his. Ubbe would thank her if he could breathe; instead he growls his pleasure with closed eyes and strokes her ribs as gently as he can with his free hand. One more gasp, one more thrust, and he is spilling in his breeches, roaring and gritting his teeth. 

When he can move again, Ubbe relinquishes her hands. He is half on top of her, too heavy to bear no doubt, and so he reluctantly begins to shift. Ardith brings her hand to his braid then, and grasps it hard. Her eyes are closed when he searches for her face; she looks down at him when she feels his gaze, and Ubbe returns his head to her chest wordlessly. She lays his braid along his back, and when she dances her fingertips over his shoulder blades, he knows he can stay until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recall reading an article about the personal hygiene and grooming habits of vikings, and lo! Ubbe's body hair kink was born. I don't know.
> 
> A 'draugr' is a sort of walking dead creature in pre-Christian Scandinavian belief. Like, you inter a dead loved one in a burial mound and then they're just knocking around in there, still up and about, and occasionally wander out to scare people. Please, do see Icelandic Sagas for further un-dead shenanigans. They occur fairly frequently in that material. 
> 
> And a 'valkyrja' is simply the Norse word for valkyrie. I'm quite sure you managed that one by yourself.
> 
> Also, think I may have invented a new tag with 'dub-con knife play.' You're welcome??


	16. Tretten

They come to him as they usually do, murmuring low to each other and bound up in the other’s thoughts. Ivar watches Hvitserk snatch up last night’s bread from the tables and Ubbe some old ale. They join him by a warm, clean smoking brazier -- it is early in the chill morning, and Harald’s hall is empty and quiet. His people are sleeping off their merriment in houses, barns and beds, and will do so until half the day has gone. 

Ivar picks at his food, and waits. He doesn’t wait for long.

Ubbe breaks the hush, speaking softly through tight lips. ‘When did we start arming slaves with knives?’ 

Ah. Ivar glances at Hvitserk, who is regarding Ubbe carefully. Ivar wonders – which of them made it there first, and which of them watched?

‘Why? Did she hurt you, brother?’ Ivar feels loose and warm, satisfied as after a full meal at the look on Ubbe’s face. It is shame, the shame of being bested; Hvitserk had worn the very same back in York.

Ubbe watches the open doorway, jaw clenched. He doesn’t look at Ivar as he speaks to him. ‘She won’t make a good spy.’ Ivar smiles at the answer that isn’t an answer, that is not a response to his own barb but in which Ivar hears something worth the listening. ‘There’s no doubt she’s clever, but she’s too fragile to be handled by Harald. And she doesn’t speak our language.’

Ivar shrugs, fiddling with his bracers. ‘The last can be remedied. We have time.’

Ubbe regards him for a long moment. 

‘Allow me to guess, Ivar. You will wait for her wings to grow back, you will clean her up, teach her our language, and present her to Harald with a collar round her throat. The most extraordinary treasure he has ever seen.’ Ubbe shakes his head, dislodging his mirthless smile. ‘You cannot think he will be so dazzled by Ardith that he won’t suspect there is something behind the gesture. Harald is not the man to be distracted by -- trinkets.’

Ivar does not miss the flicker of Hvitserk’s eyes towards Ubbe, the quickness of his glance and the strange iron in it. Hvitserk swallows, and looks at the floor in feigned unconcern when he notices Ivar’s regard. Let it lie for now, Ivar thinks.

‘Is that so?’ Ivar sets incredulity in his gaze, and casts it from Ubbe to Hvitserk, raising his eyebrows. ‘If you recall, distraction worked very well against the Saxons at Repton.’

‘This is Harald. It will take more than that.’ Ubbe is watching him now.

Ivar inclines his head. ‘I agree.’ He speaks low. ‘That is why I will have Ardith kill him.’

Ubbe spits out his ale and leans forward, shouting his whisper. ‘Are you mad?!’

‘We need Harald’s warriors.’ Ivar grins. ‘Not Harald.’

‘And you think they will fight for us, having just murdered their kinsman? Their king?’

‘I will not be murdering anyone.’ He shrugs. ‘And neither will you.’

Ivar could sicken with pleasure at the sight of Ubbe gritting his teeth against his anger. He has not had his fill, is not certain he ever could, but Hvitserk is hovering in his seat and a brawl will likely raise someone or other from their bed.

Ivar whispers urgently. ‘Don’t you think that if Harald has drawn all of these warriors to his cause - here, now - that he must have been able to persuade them that his ambition to be King of all Norway is finally to be realised?’ Ivar waves away Ubbe’s response before he makes it. ‘I know there is something to be said for kinship obligation, but do you imagine that every warrior here came as soon as he was called? Do you think that none of them needed convincing, after years of Harald’s unmet ambitions, and knowing that one day soon they would have to make an attempt on Kattegat, on Lagertha?’

‘What is your point?’ Ubbe seems to be discovering the end of his patience, his knee bouncing.

Ivar doesn’t resist rolling his eyes. ‘You saw him at the feast. He wears a crown convincingly, don’t you think?’ Ivar tips his head. ‘Especially with a queen on his arm, and the prospect of an heir on the horizon. Harald has already proven his patience, and so he will prove his virility, put a child in Astrid, and give his kinsmen a future king to fight for also. It is a persuasive picture, is it not?’

‘So, let’s kill Astrid.’ Hvitserk speaks softly. ‘I will do it. Before Harald gets her with child. Once he’s certain she is carrying his son, she’ll be under stricter protection and harder to get to.’

Ivar opens his mouth to speak, but Hvitserk keeps going, elbows on his knees. ‘If his support is really so uncertain, then the loss of his queen and the proof of his ill favour with the gods just at the moment when battle is to be joined might be enough to begin turning away his supporters.’ Ivar makes a show of his surprise at Hvitserk’s ingenuity, and Ubbe can only turn to his brother with open curiosity. ‘And if we could help to sow a little doubt ourselves, perhaps Harald will find his warriors aren’t all as keen to fight for him as he thinks.’

‘Well, brother,’ Ivar smirks and sits back, ‘how well you’ve been concealing that tactical mind.’ 

Hvitserk’s face remains as blank as stone but for the twitch of his upper lip.

‘It is less of a risk than making an attempt on Harald’, Ubbe nods at Hvitserk, ‘and it’s as easy a way to begin discrediting him as anything else. It undermines his stability as king without even the possibility of an heir and it lets his people see that the gods have no great destiny in mind for him, if he cannot even manage to keep a wife.’ 

‘And what then, hm?’ Ivar shifts against the tight pain at the bottom of his back. ‘It is not enough. If he is alive, he is a hindrance. He is a risk. If Harald has enough breath in his body to be propped up on a horse or to hold a sword in his hand, the fealty of his warriors will always be in doubt.’

Ubbe stands abruptly, rubbing his hand over his beard. Ivar regards him as he paces, and notes the ready flex in Hvitserk’s legs, ever prepared to go where his big brother goes. ‘Ardith isn’t capable of killing him. She just isn’t.’ Ubbe speaks from somewhere over Ivar’s left shoulder. 

Hvitserk looks at once as attentive as a dog and basks like a cat, and so Ivar knows exactly where Ubbe’s steady gaze is gathering without the need to turn and check. It is curious and remarkable, and he hates it. It is like light reflected on water, and it blinds him. Angers him. He regrets now that he had not followed Ubbe last night, and watched. 

‘Ubbe is right, Ivar. She doesn’t have it in her. Harald will certainly get the best of her.’ Hvitserk sinks a cup of ale. The empty cup comes to rest on his knee, and Ivar sees the tightness of his grip. ‘He’ll kill her, and if we’re lucky we’ll die fighting his warriors and he won’t get the chance to blood-eagle us.’

The quietness of the hall settles around them, and Ivar lets it. Allows himself to think of the pain and fear in Aelle’s eyes as Bjorn had hacked at his body, there in that dripping forest in England. If it were not such a dishonour, Ivar considers, it would be a beautiful way to die.

‘She asked me what a valkyrja was.’ Ubbe comes back to the brazier, crouching with his hands held out to the heat. ‘Last night.’ He speaks to the burning coals, his face caught and held in their glow. 

Ivar grits his teeth against Ubbe’s tone. As if it were an admission, one of Ubbe’s calm concessions that deliberately puts them all in mind of their father. As if he were offering knowledge at his own cost and which none of them already had. Hvitserk had led where Ubbe would follow, to Ardith, and to his own self. They all know it. And, Ivar thinks - as he regards Ubbe’s haunches, his shoulders, his long braid down his back – if his brothers aren’t fucking yet, then Ardith will tip them over the edge. Ivar doesn’t know if he is jealous.

‘A persuasive picture, you said.’ Ubbe turns to Ivar then. ‘What could be more persuasive than a valkyrja in our midst?’

‘What do you mean?’ Hvitserk shunts his chair forward, bringing himself up against Ubbe’s side. 

Ivar smiles, unable to suppress his pleasure. ‘What he means is that he finally agrees with me, don’t you Ubbe?’

Hvitserk is peering at the side of Ubbe’s face, a scowl heavy on his brow. It clears when Ubbe meets his eyes. ‘Ardith will be our messenger from the gods.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can only apologise for the ridiculously long break.


	17. Fjorten

The rain has barely stopped for fourteen nights and Ardith’s hut has been so damp as to chill Hvitserk to his bones -- even he, the most enthusiastic for freezing baths in the depth of winter, and whom Ubbe had always said must have a forge burning in his stomach to bear them.

There is nowhere else he would rather be. Hvitserk is only thankful that his little brother does not choose to linger when Ubbe and himself come to Ardith, to talk, to learn, to feed her and watch her. Ivar’s legs have tolerated far worse than the soaking cold up here but if he is content to pretend that that is the reason he won’t join their group on the long grey afternoons, then Hvitserk sees no benefit in telling Ivar he knows better. That his little brother goes to her in the night, alone and silent but for the clunk of his crutch and his metal braces, Hvitserk has no doubt. In the stillness after the evening feast, Ivar does not have to share her. Hvitserk can hardly bear to think of having Ardith to himself. The thought fills his mind regardless.

‘I wish I had more space. I cannot stretch properly in here.’ Ardith rustles her wings; they are full and bright, just as when Hvitserk first found her. She ducks her head to regard him from beneath her brows. He catches Ubbe’s half-smile in the edge of his vision; she never tries anything so blatant with _Ubbe_ , and he feels both flattered and hateful at the way she watches his face so carefully. 

Hvitserk’s Saxon is stilted, and is sometimes more Norse than anything else, but it suffices. ‘We can’t risk anyone seeing you.’ He drops the stick of charcoal he was holding, rubbing his blackened hands on his breeches. He has picked up writing quickly; Ardith had hesitated at first, but the first curious smile she had given him was when he had begun to write his own name in English letters with her dirtied fingers wrapped around his. 

Now, Ardith does not smile. ‘You cannot risk me flying away, you mean.’

‘Should we be doubting your word, then?’ Ubbe leans forward from his seat on the bed behind her. He is cleaning her wings carefully: she has never allowed Hvitserk to do it. ‘You gave your promise that you’d make no attempt to escape.’ 

Hvitserk is watching Ubbe’s mouth, held close to Ardith’s ear, and his skin prickles.

‘I gave you my promise and I meant it, however worthless you think it.’ Ardith turns her face to Ubbe’s, unflinching. ‘If you didn’t really doubt me you wouldn’t keep me in here day and night.’

She stands abruptly, pushing up from the floor. Hvitserk watches her with open lips as she paces and flaps her wings in unconcealed agitation. When she speaks, it is to Ubbe she appeals. Hvitserk sees it. He sees the gentle cant of her head, and the way she pulls in his big brother. Just as she does Hvitserk himself. ‘Ivar told me I wasn’t a slave.’

‘You are not a slave.’ Ubbe leans back against the wall, his gaze tracking Ardith as she moves. 

The more time they spend with Ardith, Hvitserk thinks, the less he understands Ubbe. The further away he feels from his brother. He cannot tell any longer if Ubbe believes his own words. Not with this. _You are not a slave._ It is a new thing to hear his brother lie, and to be on the outside of it.

‘Then may I not ask for something that would give me comfort?’ 

Ardith kneels down next to Hvitserk. She fiddles with the scrap of square fabric on the floor before him. The black signs set down on it mark his efforts, her patience. Their kinship, he thinks. Hvitserk watches her scrub her thumb lightly over his name. Her name. Ubbe. Ivar. Sigurd. Aslaug. Ragnar. Margrethe. She looks up at Ubbe, and she is the very image of a supplicant. A worshipper, or a begging wife, or a lover. Hvitserk finds that Ardith has a habit of forcing him out of himself, of making him do things without meaning to. Allowing her out of the hut is a foolish idea. But he joins his silent plea to hers without real intention, and when he throws his gaze up at Ubbe too, he wonders what his brother sees. Ardith carefully smooths out Hvitserk’s handiwork on the floor. It is, in truth, as much hers as his. 

Ardith pushes and pushes, and Hvitserk cannot help his admiration. 

‘May I not ask for something I need?’ 

The more time they spend with Ardith, the further away Hvitserk feels from Ubbe. _That_ is the truth, and his heart gripes for the gap that widens day by day. And yet –

Serving the ale at Ubbe’s wedding feast did not give him half so much shame as this, this sitting here at Ubbe’s feet. He is waiting and imploring alongside Ardith, hardly knowing why he is obeying the rules of her appeal and yet understanding that he is irked at having been dragged into it. Hvitserk watches Ubbe’s struggle, and has never felt closer to his big brother.

Ubbe sighs, and Hvitserk smiles.

\----

The forest is losing its colour in the falling dusk but it has a scent that is green and wonderful, and it has finally stopped raining. Ardith hauls Hvitserk along like an impatient hound, her wings beating and gusting in the cold night air. Ubbe’s agreement came with conditions: she would go with her wings covered until they were sure of going unseen and her hands bound, and the other end of the rope anchored to his brother. 

When Ubbe had begun to loop the cord around Hvitserk’s waist and through his belts, he had drawn down his brows in silent question. Ubbe had given him a long look while his hands tugged and fumbled at his body, and his voice was low. ‘You’re heavier than I am.’

Hvitserk heard plainly enough what Ubbe had not said. _You want to take this risk for her, brother. Then take it. Enjoy it._

Now, Ubbe’s chuckle follows Hvitserk through the deepening gloom of the trees. Ardith has shed her blanket. She looked solemn when Ubbe had called for her wrists, but she treads lightly now, almost running though she must go backwards. And she is grinning at him. Hvitserk trips over roots and branches all the way and his panting breaths are loud in his own ears; she is stronger than he imagined, with her wings snapping like sails at their magnificent height and length. They make the great forest look small, and the low tangled thickets seem dirty and crowded and cowardly. Hvitserk feels the tug in his stomach, at the bottom of his back. At the base of his prick. 

Ubbe’s footsteps are close behind. His rough laugh is boorish and strange -- perhaps it is only the confusion of the dark, the solitude that wraps around the three of them. The sharp danger of doing precisely what Ivar had forbidden. Hvitserk stops abruptly when Ardith does, and he feels Ubbe collide into his back; he curses and elbows his big brother but Ubbe is smiling by his ear, for he can feel it in the rise of the hairs on his neck.

Ardith, slight as she is, fills the clearing in the trees, and is gazing up through a break in the canopy. Hvitserk watches her, fingering the cord around his waist. He isn’t interested in the stars, and neither is Ubbe.

‘It is beautiful here.’ Ardith comes to rest on a fallen trunk like a strange bird, her bound hands hanging loose between her open knees. Hvitserk sits next to her - the same damp moss beneath his backside - keeping as much slack between them as he can. If he pushed his thigh against hers, Hvitserk thinks, she wouldn’t mind. He is almost certain. But not certain enough.

Ubbe sits on the ground, leaning back amongst the sharp-smelling pine needles thick on the forest floor.

‘King Harald will try to take me to his bed.’ Ardith looks at Ubbe, and Hvitserk feels the flutter of her feathers against his back when she shifts at his shoulder. She doesn’t look at him, but her knee rubs his and Hvitserk swallows against the feeling in his chest.

‘So Ivar has told you then. What you have to do.’ Ubbe regards them both, gathering Hvitserk by eye first.

Ardith nods slowly, her gaze far away from them both then. Out into the blackness of the trees. ‘Yes.’

Hvitserk stands. He meets Ubbe’s eyes, and he knows they are both thinking the same thing. _Let’s just set her free. By all the gods, let us just cut the rope now and be done with it._ He doesn’t wait for Ubbe’s nod, or his denial. He doesn’t think. He yanks Ardith to her feet by the rope and slices through it with his knife in one stroke, grasping her wrists and dragging her to his chest.

‘Hvitserk!’ Ubbe growls, and makes a grasp for Hvitserk’s ankle. He cracks his heel against Ubbe’s jaw and his stomach turns over at the resounding grunt. Shoving Ardith in front of him, Hvitserk makes a sprint for the nearest group of trees and she goes unresisting, just keeping pace with him. They have no more than a breath’s advantage and Hvitserk halts her and puts his shoulder against a tree; he can hear Ubbe thudding through the dark and swearing. Hvitserk pulls Ardith towards him. Quickly, he cuts through the knots around her wrists; he daren’t look at her face for fear of slicing her skin but he hearkens to the sound of her heavy breathing and Hvitserk’s veins are full of fire. He doesn’t have the courage to laugh, though he feels the need in his throat.

Hvitserk doesn’t get the chance to speak before Ubbe swings round the trunk behind which they are half hidden; he shunts Ardith away and his breath is knocked fully from his chest when Ubbe ploughs into him and tackles him down. His mouth is full of dirt and mulch, and blood from his bitten tongue. He is grunting and roaring, and it is with great effort that Ubbe flips him onto his back and manages to sit on his stomach. Hvitserk knows Ardith has not fled by the vicious look Ubbe throws somewhere over his head, and when his brother pulls his axe from his belt she cries out. 

‘Ubbe! Don’t!’

Her voice is raw terror and Hvitserk knows then that he loves her.

Ubbe is panting, his teeth bared. The blade of his axe thumps into the soft earth next to Hvitserk’s head; Ardith makes a noise but Hvitserk doesn’t flinch. There is no need.

‘You fucking idiot!’ Ubbe smacks him across the mouth in pure anger. Hvitserk smirks, and strains to unseat him, throwing up his hips and trying to wrap a leg around one of Ubbe’s without the least desire to actually remove him. It doesn’t work. Ubbe doubles down and pins Hvitserk’s arms to the ground. ‘What did you think Ivar would do, hm? You know what he did to Sigurd, and just for childish insults. What would he do to you for this?’ Ubbe’s face is thrust up against his now, and Hvitserk’s eyes drop shut. He wonders what Ardith must be thinking. ‘By all the fucking gods, Hvitserk…’

Ubbe flops onto the ground next to him. Hvitserk feels suddenly exhausted.

They both turn towards the sound of Ardith coming towards them. She kneels in the small space between their splayed limbs and silently undoes the remaining cord from around Hvitserk’s waist. She looks pensive -- and sorry, he thinks.

‘We should return.’ Ardith drops the untangled rope in Hvitserk’s lap and holds out her wrists. She watches Ubbe with caution in her face. ‘Before we’re missed.’


	18. Femten

Ardith no longer prays. Back home, it was easy and seemed worthwhile -- when she was comfortable and safe, and kept in a lazy sort of assurance that it worked. Here, she thinks, it does not matter. Sister Agnes would have said that faith is most important, and is to be cherished, when we are being tested. But Sister Agnes is dead, and wrong besides. Faith is a luxury. 

Captivity, though, has been less desolate than Ardith would have expected. There are not many hours in a day when she is not bothered with someone’s company. In her heart, she knows she is not sorry for it. She is, at least, not lonely. By day, it has been Hvitserk and Ubbe jostling for her attention, and when the evening draws down, it has been Ivar wanting to touch and be touched in return. And, somehow, the knowledge of routine reminds her of the nunnery.

Now, when Ivar comes to her they share in a sort of catechism, though Ardith has not made the observation aloud. To talk of her faith either amuses Ivar or it doesn’t, and she does not have enough courage to take up every risk that passes by. But she gives where she must, when Ivar asks the same questions over and again. _What does Ubbe do to you? Do you like it? Does Hvitserk touch you? Who do you prefer? Tell me. Tell me._ Often, he will remain while she sleeps and Ardith has learnt that she need have no fears for herself on that count. Whatever cruelties he is capable of, she knows Ivar for a certain kind of man. His pleasure is best served when he might meet it eye to eye, awake to its own pain and able to witness it in the day’s cold light. 

To begin with, however, Ivar would clatter through the door with, it seemed, little on his mind but his legs. Borne in his wake would be an old woman with clean cloths and hot water and some oil that smelled dreadfully of fish. When Ivar would lay back on the pallet half-naked and near to grinding his teeth to stubs, Ardith need say nothing. His legs were beyond any real help. They both knew it. Still, she warmed and massaged his cramped muscles most nights and did what she could for him. Once, he had cried. Ardith hadn’t paused when she noticed the fat tears rolling down Ivar’s temples into his dark hair. Instead, she had put her full weight into the work of her hands and willed the great chasm that opened in her stomach to close itself. She bid her heart to harden but Ivar had begun to sob loudly and she couldn’t bear the sound of it. Half fear and half sympathy, she began to sing. Ardith dared not try a Christian hymn, but a harmless song about the May flowers that even the sour Sister Hilda could not have objected to. She sang as she worked, her voice far gentler than her fingers, and kept going until the task was done and Ivar had exhausted himself with weeping.

He had pulled her down by his side as she tried to rise, wiping at his raw eyes with the back of his hand. He watched her with parted lips, the scrutiny of his gaze flickering like a candle flame across her face. Ardith had tried to conceal the trembling of her limbs but Ivar saw and followed everything with the keenness of a cat, and he gathered her to him until she was almost sitting in his lap.

His damp fingertips drifted up, to her shoulder, her throat, her cheek. He spoke low and calm and clear— there was no thickness in his throat from the hot, hard work of crying. ‘Your voice is very sweet.’ Ivar’s fingers seized on her jaw suddenly, and they were like iron bands. ‘But do not ever do that again.’

\------

‘I thought that nuns were – how do you say it? Celibate?’ Ubbe is making slow work of braiding her hair and Ardith can hear the smile in his voice.

‘Yes. They are.’ Ardith cannot help the slight curl at the corner of her mouth, though she is grateful for an excuse not to turn and face him.

‘You seemed to know what you were doing earlier.’ His voice is playful, light. Ardith knows she can rely on that – his need to smother his guilt with his sweetness towards her.

‘Nuns are virgins. They give themselves to God, rather than a husband or a lover.’ Ardith isn’t going to follow where Ubbe is trying to lead her. Yet. ‘But they are still of mankind, with mankind’s faults.’

‘A god cannot love you the way that a man can.’ He proffers a hand forward over her shoulder, seeking for the leather thong to finish her hair. ‘And surely, not your dead god.’

‘No, indeed.’ She passes it back to him, and their fingers tangle together briefly. ‘I believe that is precisely the point.’

When Ivar had instructed her to offer her body to Ubbe, she had had no reason to disbelieve that Ubbe would reject her. They knew nothing of each other, then. And now. His hands and his mouth have caressed her and his body pressed heavy on hers, and she harbours no regret – though she cannot quite put a name to the feeling that sits in her throat when they are together. Nor can she now pretend that it was all merely in service of survival. She thought, to begin with, that he might merely be worth enduring. She turns to regard him, and his face is close to hers and his eyes are wide and serious. She knows she was half right. His care for her, she thinks, might be the best leverage she has. And his strange, simple goodness – it pains her, and it saves her too.

Ardith tolerates Hvitserk, though she begins to wish she could see those things that Ubbe sees in him. Ubbe loves him, she feels sure, because there is something in him worth loving, some fire worth tending to and keeping alight. Ubbe houses Ivar in his heart because he has no choice, the way a whipped dog loves a master that saves it from starvation, no matter the foulness and frequency of the beatings. 

‘I’d never lain with a man, before – before Hvitserk.’ She notices how Ubbe’s eyes flicker at his brother’s name. ‘That does not mean that I didn’t know my own body. At least a little.’ Ardith pushes him away then, setting a hand to his shoulder and shoving gently. Ubbe smirks, and gives her room on the pallet. ‘Besides, I was never really one of the Sisters. I was something like a Novice.’ She smiles at the lack of apprehension on Ubbe’s face. ‘An apprentice, of sorts. Such as a blacksmith or a shipwright might take on, to learn the trade.’ 

Ubbe gazes up, nodding his understanding; he is stretched out beneath her, his fingers cradling her hips. Ardith settles her thighs comfortably over his waist. ‘I never took orders. I was never under true obligation to keep my virginity intact, so I would not have been cast out if I had lain with a man.’ She thinks of the few men she had ever come into familiar contact with: Father Alwin, a small handful of the Brothers, labourers and suchlike performing work and repairs on the buildings. Their shock at her appearance never dwindled into anything less than reverence, or a half-concealed wariness at best. Even Father Alwin, who had come to know her well. Ardith remembers, too, the advice from Sister Agnes upon the subject of men: it had been unlike her, to speak half her meaning when one might usually count on her alone of all the others to give her words and thoughts with a brusqueness that never left room for doubt. 

_There are men who would look to you as something to be used, Ardith. Because you are special, yes. But, to speak truth, because there are men who see something special and want it not for itself, but to have it so no other can. Men whose greed has no limits and whose souls are rotten. That is why you must stay here, sweet child. Where we can keep you safe._

‘It never needed to be said though’, Ardith watches Ubbe watching her and feels at once sick with power and fatigued with her own smallness, ‘that the opportunity to allow a man between my legs would never come to pass.’ The heat of her cunt is burning against his stomach, and she knows he can feel it through her breeches and his tunic by the restless shifting of his body and the steady, sharp focus of his blue eyes. His attention calms her even as it frightens her, and she cannot imagine she will survive to see a day when it will ever be different -- 

_\--- and want it not for itself, but to have it so no other can—_

\--- but she meets his gaze and she thinks of Ivar and Hvitserk and the jealousy that neither, she now understands, takes the trouble to conceal. She grinds against the bulk of Ubbe’s body as he lets his mouth fall open and she can feel her cheeks pinking. Ardith rolls her hips again and licks her lower lip without thought when Ubbe huffs through his gritted teeth, and she concedes to herself one wickedness of her own amongst all of this -- such as it matters. They are all fighting over her – for their own purposes, she knows well enough – but her pride begins to wake, and sniff the air around it. 

‘Ardith.’

Absurdly, she feels fortunate. Ubbe is so patient with her. 

‘Ardith, I want to use my mouth on you.’ 

Ubbe is as still and silent as a tree as he waits for her answer. What, she wonders, would he do if she said no?

‘What if I denied you?’ Ardith dares to offer a teasing smile. 

Ubbe’s eyes flutter shut, and he looks different – harder – when he finds her gaze again. ‘Then I would have to go and find someone to shove my prick in.’ He suddenly sits up, and Ardith does not flinch. She regards the crook of his eyebrow and his sharp teeth peeking through a smug half-grin and finds that she is too angry to be frightened. The hot, bright flash in her gut spills into her limbs and she considers, for the briefest of moments, actually striking him. 

Ardith begins to shuffle away from him but her feet don’t find the floor before Ubbe’s large hand clasps her arm, sure but not harsh. His smile is true now, gentle and understanding. 

‘Jealous, are we?’

Ardith feels flushed, and stupid for being so easily seen. When Ubbe tugs her, she goes with resistance ready in the strain of her shoulders. She doesn’t wish to use it, and when she resettles over his lap and he puts his face against her neck, it disappears in a breath. 

‘I enjoy your jealousy.’ He speaks into her throat, scraping his teeth on her skin. ‘You wanted to hit me, did you not?’ Ubbe pulls away to look her in the eye: he looks hungry. ‘You can slap me, if you like. I told you I wouldn’t hurt you, and I won’t.’ He tugs her against his body with a strong arm curved around her back and mumbles, breath damp and self-satisfied, against her lips. ‘I won’t hit you back. You can take that liberty with me, but you’d be a fool to try it with anyone else.’ Ubbe opens his mouth over hers and Ardith hasn’t the will to resist returning his kiss. He tastes of ale when he forces his tongue into her mouth and she recoils at the wet feel of it but his grip gives her no recourse. Ardith wraps his braid around her fist and pulls him away, and Ubbe leaves her on a gasp, laughing with his face forced upwards to the sight of the rafters. Ardith watches the lump in his long throat bobbing as he speaks. 

‘I won’t hit you back, but if your anger gets the better of you with Ivar you’ll be food for the crows.’

Ardith releases him, and he rubs at the back of his head. He regards her with quiet amusement, and something like contrition. She will explain that to him on another day – contrition, and repentance. One day when it will matter, she thinks. 

She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and returns him a grudging smile. 

‘I know it. I know Ivar would kill me without the hesitation of a breath if it pleased him. And I know you cannot stop him.’ 

Ubbe nods stiffly, and she feels unkind suddenly. ‘What about Hvitserk? What do you think he would do if I provoked him?’

‘I can protect you from Hvitserk, if need be. He certainly won’t hurt you while I am there.’ Ubbe runs his fingers through her hair, snagging slightly on the tangles that he cards through gently. He is watching the movement of his own hand, as his fingertips drag down softly onto the skin at the base of Ardith’s throat. She shudders against the feathery touch, and he puts his lips where his fingers had been. Ardith cannot help the way that her body seizes against his, and she clutches at his shoulders. Ubbe flicks his tongue out, twice, three times. He groans when she scrapes her finger nails across the back of his shaved head and down his neck: it is a pleasing, and useful, weak spot, and she bucks against him with more intent. Ubbe manages to speak with his tongue still flickering like a serpent on her throat. ‘I think if you had the courage to provoke Hvitserk, he would enjoy it as much as I do.’

Ardith allows Ubbe to surge up and put her over on her back, closing her eyes briefly to enjoy the horrid feeling of being tossed as though on a wave. She lands softly -- Ubbe has arranged the furs to pad her shoulders, less sore by the day but with wings less than half grown still. 

‘I want your cunt in my mouth, Ardith.’ Ubbe is crouched over her and clutching at her waist, his knees either side of her thighs. ‘Just that, nothing else. You have my word. But I…’ He drops his forehead to her stomach and breathes deep. She considers, then, as she watches him struggle with himself, that no one benefits by Ubbe’s weaknesses but Ivar. Not her, not Hvitserk – for all his envy. Only Ivar. She clenches her jaw, and speaks in spite of herself. 

‘When you talk about me, with Hvitserk…what do you say?’

Ubbe looks up at her, his eyes shining. He cocks his head and the silence stretches on. 

‘And what will you tell Ivar when I don’t give you an answer?’ His voice is flat. 

Ardith watches him carefully, saying nothing as she moves her shaking hands down to the laces of her breeches. She fumbles for a moment. ‘You can take them off.’  
Ubbe blinks, then stoops silently to his task, helping her undo the knots. He begins to pull the cloth down over her hips and from beneath her arse, tossing away her belt and hastily pushing her tunic up her stomach before her breeches have made it past her knees: he is staring at her white thighs, and the wild tangle of red curls on her cunt. 

‘U-Ubbe.’ Ardith chokes out his name. It is a quiet and fearful noise, she realizes, and sounds, truth to tell, more dreadful than she feels. 

If he was angered but a moment ago, he is no longer. Ubbe looks at her with an almost laughable mask of surprise across his features. He handles her boots and breeches clumsily and then her legs are open and –

‘Let me taste you.’ Ubbe bites at the inside of her knee, finding her face with his eyes. ‘Tell Ivar whatever you like. I don’t care.’ He falls to his stomach and shoulders her thighs further apart, nosing into her cunt without warning. 

Ardith gasps and rolls up, clutching at his head when she feels his tongue slip wetly through her. She cannot deny it, it feels wonderful -- and Ubbe’s dog-like eagerness as he slides his oily mouth against her is so unbearably earnest that she hasn’t the time to feel shame in exposing herself to a man like this. He doesn’t stop when her thighs seize around his head, and she is panting as though she had a run a mile as his tongue works in a sure pattern, over and again, upon the nub that makes her cunt clench.

‘Ubbe.’ Ardith gets a heel against his shoulder and shoves. ‘Slower.’

His scrutiny of her face is brief and she finds she cannot read him, but then he is pulling away and rising to his knees. Ubbe tugs his own tunic over his head before guiding Ardith up by her hand, bringing her to her feet by the side of the pallet. She stands, brows down and half naked and feeling foolish as he silently takes his place on his back. Ardith regards him, his body half way down the bed, his long legs draping on the dusty floor. 

He smiles at her sweetly and beckons her. ‘Kneel over my face.’

Ardith balks. ‘I—can’t, Ubbe. It’s…’

‘You will be in control. You can decide how slow, how deep…’ 

She has the impression that he wishes to laugh at the expression on her face, but he does not and she is thankful for his restraint. 

‘…how deep, how fast. Or, not at all. You could show me how you please yourself instead.’ Ubbe speaks soft and low, and kind. In spite of the crude things he is saying. ‘Please.’ He tangles his fingers in hers, and she goes to him. 

Ardith straddles his face awkwardly, her own as red as madder, she is sure. Ubbe is heedful of one thing only, opening his mouth and reaching out his tongue to her cunt. She allows him to swipe once through her, then snags her fingers tightly in his hair and pins his head to the furs. 

He grins. ‘That’s it. Go on.’

Ardith grinds her cunt down against his beard and lips, reeling out the pretense that he isn’t ready. He only grunts, pleased and curling his arms around her thighs from behind. She moves her hips uncertainly and her eyes slip shut. It feels -- there is not a word for it, so she says something else. 

‘It wasn’t Ivar that asked.’

She watches his brows crease and his eyes become still. It seems there is a readiness in him, suddenly. Ardith can sense it in the heavy pause of his body, motionless beneath her own. 

‘What?’ His voice is hoarse.

Ardith swallows and it echoes strangely in her head. ‘The question. Before. I asked you what you say about me to Hvitserk. With Hvitserk.’ She doesn’t think she can unclench her fingers from his hair, so they remain as they are; her wet cunt a breath or two away from his face. ‘It wasn’t Ivar that wanted to know.’

He must notice that she is trembling. Still, he says nothing. 

Ardith takes a shuddering breath. ‘Hvitserk. He doesn’t trust you. And you don’t trust him, do you?’

Ubbe’s jaw clenches and he seems about to speak, but Ardith cuts across him. It is important. ‘But you must trust him. You must trust each other in this.’ She resettles her weight, slowly and with care, until her backside is against his chest. Her thighs ache and her heart hammers in her throat, and Ubbe waits. ‘You love Hvitserk deeply. You have told me so yourself. And you have shared a bed with your wife between you. That you told me also, if I understood you correctly.’ Ardith lets loose her grip on his hair, and gentles her fingers down over his ear and the hot skin of his neck. Ubbe is wide-eyed and his throat bobs. He nods gently. He is not angry -- he is hurt, she thinks. Let the pain have him a little longer, that he might be still and listen to me. _And hear me._

‘There are things that Ivar speaks to no one. He keeps his own counsel. More than you think, perhaps. There are the questions that he asks me, that is true. You have the right of it there. But there are questions that he does not.’ 

Ubbe licks his lips and his fingers drift up her side. He says nothing: he is listening.

‘Some things he need not ask. Because he already knows the answer, Ubbe.’ She tries to catch his gaze, but he will not allow it.

His voice, when he speaks, is quiet and steady. ‘The first time I tumbled Hvitserk was because of my wife. She wanted me to do it, if you can believe that.’ Ubbe’s eyes slip closed. ‘And I knew then that Ivar would find out, and make use of the knowledge one day. He has all the cunning of our father, and none of his – control.’ He gives his unfocused gaze to the rafters then, and shows his teeth in an almost-smile. Ardith watches his lips curl unpleasantly, remaining as still as she can. ‘Until we found you, I had allowed myself to forget the danger of it. Ivar had concerns beyond where his brothers might have been putting their pricks. We all did. And it would not have mattered. Ivar could say what he pleased about me, or Hvitserk. But he would have to beat either of us in a fight to prove such a ridiculous accusation and he never could. Even now.’ 

His eyes seek hers, and she nods slightly. We only hate where we love, she thinks. And we yearn to protect what we could crush if we were so minded. She considers Ivar’s poor legs, and Ubbe understands the expression on her face. She knows it.

Ubbe huffs out a long breath through his nose, and his eyelids fall once more. She feels his voice vibrate through his chest. ‘Now that Ivar has you, he has a strategy. Now, he has a way to make use of what he has learned.’ He gives Ardith a long look, then. ‘If only Hvitserk had killed you in York.’

Ardith watches his eyes moving across her face. Tentatively, she brushes her fingertips through his beard and his lips part. ‘If only Hvitserk was as smart as you, I’d be dead and he would not be doing Ivar’s work for him.’ Her thumbnail clicks gently against one of his white teeth. ‘Splitting you asunder, until Ivar knows he has not two united rivals but a divided enemy – if not a wounded and angry ally.’

Ubbe’s breath is hot across her hand as he smiles. ‘I hope Ivar does not realize even half of your cleverness.’ He nips at her thumb. ‘Though I think he must. You sound more like him every day.’

Ardith opens her mouth to protest but is cut off when Ubbe shunts her forward by a strong grip on her backside and sets his tongue slithering through the slick opening of her cunt. He works at her without rest, grunting and shoving his face into her and she is choking on the feeling of it, unable to speak and aware that Ubbe knows it. She can only watch – she sees the effort, the longing, the joy, the dissatisfaction in his closed eyes and furrowed brow. Reaching behind her, Ardith softly cups Ubbe’s hard prick through his breeches, and his hips lurch, snagged on her palm as if a bird snared in lime. He peers up at her, neither stopping nor slowing down but pleading with his eyes. Ardith’s gut roils and her skin burns and she knows what she wants -- but she knows too that she cannot, when her chest seizes with something tight and her eyes begin to sting with tears, and when her hand comes away from Ubbe’s groin and she is shaking like a new lamb. 

Ardith only feels Ubbe quirk his mouth against the hot, wet flesh between her legs: his eyes smile obligingly, and he shakes his head at her, wordlessly clutching at her trembling fingers and bringing them back to his hair. She picks his tightly bound braid with her nails and sets her will on him that is beneath her: she pushes her cunt harder against him and she feels herself begin to tighten, like a rope twisting and twisting until it begins to turn in on itself with the strain, and oh – and nothing. It will not come. It will not, though Ubbe keeps on and on. 

There is a ghost, Ardith knows, standing there with them. Waiting patiently at bedside. There always will be, she thinks. Always – until she beckons him forward, perhaps.   
Gently, she pushes Ubbe away with a palm to his sweating forehead. His confusion is clear but he goes as bid and allows her to sit back. The hut is warm and close, and she listens to Ubbe’s heavy breathing, and regards him fondly, she finds, as he brushes his hand across his beard. She waits for her courage to rise, and she thinks of the last question that Ivar had asked of her, in the still hours of last evening.

_Do you hate them?_

_No, Ivar. I don’t hate them._

‘You didn’t answer my question, Ubbe.’

‘If Hvitserk has threatened you into…’

‘Threatened me into spying for him? What is there he can threaten me with that he has not already done?’ Ardith chooses not to curb the sharpness of her voice.   
Ubbe casts his eyes away, and there is something in the shape of his mouth that gives Ardith to think he wishes to speak but cannot -- that he holds something, gathering and swelling in his mind, but will not let it be heard. 

She will have her answer. She waits. 

‘He keeps his own counsel. More than you think perhaps.’ Ubbe gives her a small smile, hesitance in every word – her words – that he repeats back to her. ‘Hvitserk, he -- when we are together, alone and without Ivar, we do speak of you, and often. I’m sure you knew that without my saying so.’ He is quiet, rueful. ‘We talk of other things, certainly. Of our father, our home. Of war. But we both know they are –- just familiar ways of wandering. Old paths that wind back to where we wish to be. Here and now.’ Ubbe swallows, and fingers the hem of her tunic. ‘It is about you. I mean – it has become about you. All of it. Somehow. Hvitserk and Ivar and I, we were – we were _as we were._ Before we found you.’ Ubbe shakes his head, clenches his jaw. Ardith watches him and her heart is bound with a tightness she cannot dislodge, and she wishes she could know Ubbe’s mind without witnessing his struggle in speaking it. ‘Now, we are more and less like our old selves every day. More like children, fighting over something each of us wants.’ Ardith’s skin breaks out in goose-flesh at the absent-minded drift of Ubbe’s hands up her back. ‘And less like the boys our father left behind, manipulating and lying and killing our way to a goal that I’m not sure any of us truly share. And Hvitserk – he conceals things from me. I used to know his mind better. Now, it seems he sets traps to see if I will lie about him, or about myself.’ 

Ardith nods encouragingly, her eyes set on Ubbe’s creased brow. She is piqued, half hoping and half afraid to hear the words that he wrings from himself. 

‘We each want something the other has, as I said.’ Ubbe looks abashed, and as she regards him carefully she begins to understand. ‘Ivar has some helpless part of you that neither I nor Hvitserk will ever be able to reach, I think.’ Ardith closes her eyes, and breathes heavily through her nose, flinching lightly at the tripping of Ubbe’s fingertips over her under-developed wings. 

‘And there is a—confidence, between us. Is there not?’ Ubbe looks up at her, the longing for approbation clear on his face. ‘That you do not share with my brothers?’

Ubbe, she considers, is her best option for survival and they both know it. She smiles at him sincerely. ‘Only with you.’ She finds that she means it, all the same.

‘And Hvitserk…’ Ubbe’s hands come quickly to her waist, gripping tightly to lift Ardith from his chest. He shifts from beneath her and settles her carefully at the end of the bed, throwing a fur across her legs. She lets herself be handled, set back from the range of his grasp, and from the line of his sight too, she notices. Ubbe avoids her gaze as he replaces his tunic. 

‘And Hvitserk?’ The store of mistrust in Ardith’s belly begins to simmer and rise, though she knows what he will say.

To his credit, there is shame in the lowness of his voice and the dip of his eyes. ‘When I talk about you with Hvitserk, it is I that asks the questions and Hvitserk who gives the answers as though I were burning them from him with hot irons. I ask him… I force him to tell me what it felt like to be inside you. How soft, how warm, how wet, your cunt was.’ 

Ubbe leans back heavily against the wall and scrubs a hand over his face. Ardith’s throat feels full and she swallows hard to stop the bitterness threatening in her gullet.

‘You envy him that. You envy the manner of it.’ Her fingers clutch tightly in the furs, pressing them securely in her lap. 

Ubbe catches the tremulous movement of her hands, and shakes his head. ‘I won’t hurt you. I gave you my word. Believe it, Ardith.’

Silently, she searches out her breeches, flung on the floor in Ubbe’s haste, and dresses. She breathes and steadies herself, pulls the laces tight about her hips, and her belt securely around her waist, and he watches her. He is unmoving, gaze attendant on the slow, careful journey of her hands. Ardith is less conscious of her nakedness than before; before she was stolen away, and before these strange brothers began to see her as she had never seen herself. He looks at the curls between her thighs as she makes herself decent, and she moves no quicker for his ardent scrutiny. At length, she sits, and collects herself.

‘And you must believe this, Ubbe. Whatever Ivar knows or has guessed about you and Hvitserk is hardly more valuable for my presence alone. It did not begin only when you found me in York, this effort to cleave you and he apart. I did not understand any of you then, neither the words you spoke nor what was in your hearts. I wasn’t certain you had hearts at all.’ Ardith smiles sadly, and there is regret, she thinks, in the look that Ubbe returns to her. ‘I could not fathom what you meant to do to me, or why you came at all, but I felt it… I felt the presence of this awful, dark thing, something that bound you to Ivar and to Hvitserk so tightly but which kept you from the joy of brotherhood with anyone else. It was as if each of you was afflicted with the same fever, the sweating sort that gives your eyes a false flame and makes your limbs seem to tremble with life and strength, but for which any creature of sense would avoid you until you fell down dead from a heart that never knew it was weakened.’ Ardith leans forward, laying her hand lightly on Ubbe’s shin. His eyes look wet. ‘And Ivar counts on it. That fever that addles your mind and your judgements, and that gives you ease in risking those things you never believed you could lose. Until you do lose them.’ Ardith is filled, suddenly, dreadfully, with longing for her home, and she feels a scalding tear slide down her cheek. It lands on the back of her hand, where it lays still on Ubbe’s leg. ‘And I -- am not a strategy, Ubbe. I’m a lucky accident. That’s all.’

Ubbe pulls her then, gently, against his warm chest. ‘And how do I know that these aren’t Ivar’s words I am hearing, hmm?’ He mumbles against the top of her head, his hands tracing soothing patterns on her back. Ardith clings to him: Ubbe has spoken his doubts without truly meaning them, she considers. For she feels it – that small trust in her - in the calmness of his voice and the sweet caress of his fingers.

‘There is a confidence between us.’ Ardith shifts, presses her nose against the side of Ubbe’s throat. Her face feels damp and hot, and her head begins to ache. She is so tired. ‘Is there not?’

Ubbe sighs. ‘I’m glad Hvitserk didn’t kill you in York. And I’m sorry for what he did to you. For all that my shame is worth.’ He grasps her cheek softly, pulling her up to meet his eyes. ‘Which is likely very little, no?’ A hopeless smile tilts the corner of his mouth.

The mildness of Ubbe’s fingers slipping over the skin of her jaw brings Ivar to her mind unbidden. His strong, dirty hands, his thin pitiful legs. His restless tongue, and his heavy body. And his questions. His ceaseless, desperate questions. _Who do you prefer? Tell me. Tell me._

She gives Ubbe a different answer than that which is he after, but one which, she knows, he is pleased to hear. ‘You need not protect me from Hvitserk and you need not fight over me either.’ She doesn’t allow his curious expression to trouble her. ‘If I can learn to trust Hvitserk, then so can you. Certainly, you must. You will know his mind again, and he yours.’ Ardith must appear more serene than she feels, for Ubbe regards her now with soft eyes and a placid look on his brow. ‘You recall the knife that Ivar gave me. He told me to use it in defense, should any person unware of my presence here discover me and try to make it known, or to harm me.’ Ubbe nods. ‘He also said I should use it on whichever of you tried to – to force himself upon me. He did not say as much, but I could read his thoughts without hearing them spoken: he expected it would be Hvitserk.’ 

Ubbe swallows, and sets his gaze on his own lap.

There is a wretchedness biting at Ardith’s heart; it is for herself, but it is sorrow for Ubbe too. And, howsoever unlikely, some small understanding for Hvitserk. She has not said or thought one word of prayer since she came to this new world, and believes she never may, but there is spare mercy in her yet -- an ache in her that recognizes the distress of another who has been cast adrift. Hvitserk has one brother who would see him dead for – for sport, for some greater plan, for simple lack of care, Ardith cannot fathom. And he has another, she reflects, as she watches Ubbe take her fingers lightly in her own, who is so full of love for him that Hvitserk should be made to sink with the burden of such tenderness. Or else, crack down the middle, shattered by the weight both of conditional compassion and unending indifference. 

‘Ivar does not know Hvitserk as he thinks he does. And that is worth something, Ubbe. To us both.’

Ubbe’s eyes are large and dark, and there is anger beneath his skin and in the tightness of his jaw. He does not turn it on her: he brings their lips together firmly, but not unkindly. Ardith yields to Ubbe because the part of her that is still living demands it. She does it because she wants to. She winds her hand in his long braid and tugs gently, simply because she knows that he likes it. He grunts, pleased, against her mouth and her gut turns over delightfully.

Ubbe is her best option for survival, and they both know it. But, she considers, two brothers are better than one.

\--

‘You have more of it on your face than on the sheet before you.’ Ardith smiles good-naturedly at Hvitserk, and Ubbe scoffs. 

Teaching them both to write is, she is discovering, a task that rewards patience. And, one that would be impossible without it. Ardith keeps her opinions to herself regarding Ubbe’s comparative slowness in learning to write a language he can speak with skill. Instead, she finds that a nudge to Hvitserk’s foot and a secret grin beyond Ubbe’s notice serves her better. Hvitserk’s scowl – half concentration and half dissatisfaction at the lack of attention, Ardith feels sure – tends to slide away when she includes him but does not chastise or tease Ubbe. Hvitserk is an invidious competitor and a vigilant defender all at once. It is a fretful strain to manage, she considers, and one that would make her as doubtful of everything as it seems to make Hvitserk. 

She rises from Ubbe’s side and comes to sit with Hvitserk upon the floor, inspecting the efforts of that afternoon laid out on the large sheet of sailcloth before them. He has grasped Saxon letters quickly, scribing out the alphabet and the most necessary words of her language, and can understand more of it when spoken than can speak himself. Ubbe aids them both in translating back and forth, and has taken to watching them struggle through their miscommunications with a stubbornly silent amusement. Ardith catches his eye in such moments, intending to show her irritation, but more often than not will witness his pleasure and leave him be. 

‘Still, I can scarcely believe the pace of your skill. You truly have a hand for it, Hvitserk.’ Ardith shoulders him softly. The more contact she seeks out, the less anxious she feels in his presence. And Hvitserk has finally stopped looking at her as if she has sprouted a second head but regards her, keen and careful and appreciative, whenever she is near him. He never returns her touches.

‘And a face for it, too.’ Ubbe snorts. 

Hvitserk has black smudges across his nose, his mouth and his temples from the charcoal they use for writing. His habit of brushing his fingers across his face as he contemplates his work gives him the look of a child that has broken away from its mother to enjoy it’s freedom in a muddy puddle. Ardith smothers her grin, and looks about her for the bowl of water and a cloth. 

‘Here. Let me.’ She gestures with the damp rag, displaying more certainty than she feels. 

Hvitserk tips his head up to her obediently, though there are questions in his eyes. He says nothing as she wipes, firm and quick, at his forehead and down the bridge of his nose. Ardith watches Hvitserk watching Ubbe: she can see the latter at the edge of her vision, nodding in as sparse and brief a manner as to seem trifling to anyone else. Hvitserk, she notes, takes what he needs from it, for her draws his gaze back to her. As he is grounded by Ubbe’s assurance, so he is upset by the feel of her wet fingers dragging over his mouth. The charcoal sticks in the fair hair on his upper lip and she sees the blossoming of some small vexation in his countenance as she continues to handle him and abuse his skin. Good, she thinks. His thickening confusion, the first bristling of indignity in his overly still body, pricks her conscience and pleases her at once.

‘Charcoal can be stubborn.’ Ardith drops the cloth back in the bowl. She smiles, modest and inoffensive – but nevertheless feeling she has confronted him in some way. ‘You should be more careful.’ 

Ardith finds Ubbe far easier to _see_ , to discover at a glance. Hvitserk wears blankness intentionally, she finds. As he nods slowly at her suggestion, Hvitserk appears to her to sense some injury done him, without knowing quite where the hurt has been laid. The strange lethargy of the moment breaks when Ubbe stands abruptly behind her. He heads for the door, bumping Hvitserk with his knee as he passes. 

‘I need to take a piss.’

Ardith is never alone with Hvitserk, not since that first night: Ubbe does not allow it. 

‘Hvitserk hasn’t finished his letters.’ Ardith directs her gaze up to Ubbe in command or entreaty, she will let him choose. Hvitserk makes a noiseless protest – to be allowed to stay, or to be permitted to break away, she cannot tell – by giving her a steady look. 

‘I won’t be long, then.’ 

Ardith thinks she can hear Ubbe’s indulgent frown as he leaves them. Taking heed of the sound of his retreating footsteps, Ardith picks up a spare piece of charcoal and sets down a pair of new words. Hvitserk seems overly devoted to minding himself when he shifts closer to observe her work. 

‘What do they say?’

‘Repentance.’ She points to each word in turn. ‘And contrition.’

Hvitserk screws up his face a little. ‘What do they mean?’

Ardith tries to call the correct Norse words to mind to be able to explain them with all their import, but falters. ‘They are – difficult to explain. We will need Ubbe, I think.’ Sitting cross-legged, the toe of her boot knocks against his thigh. He flexes against it. ‘But the meaning can wait. Just copy it out for now.’

One day, Ardith thinks, he will learn what they mean. She follows the precise progression of his blackened fingers and his grasp of the task is sure, impressive. Amongst the monks and the lay-brothers, his ability would not have gone unrewarded. Here, she reflects with chagrin, there is much waste. Of life, of kindness. And of opportunity. She regards the sure flight of his left hand up to his jaw, and his hunched shoulders, bent to his work and shifting with a harmless, honest effort: one day, when it matters, she promises herself, I will teach him what they truly mean. 

‘When you talk about me, with Ubbe…what do you say?’ 

The sudden rearing of Hvitserk’s head makes her heart stumble, though he appears without anger.

Surprise bleeds through his habitual restraint. ‘Did Ivar order you to ask me that?’

Ardith could almost smile at his quickness. ‘No. He didn’t.’ 

Hvitserk blinks, watching her from beneath his brows for a long moment. He opens his mouth to speak, and there is intention, some inclination to open himself to her, she thinks. He flinches away as though bitten when he hears the bang of Ubbe’s boots and the creak of the door. Bending his head to the words before him, Hvitserk feigns concentration on his work. Ardith knows it, for his free hand is clenched and still, and his face remains clean.

**Works inspired by this one:**

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